20 Things That Are More Dangerous Than Raw Cookie Dough

If I had to sum up my love for raw cookie dough, it would be to the tune of REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Loving You.” Listen to the lyrics and tell me that’s not what this song is about. I happen to love eating raw cookie dough despite the dangers the media is throwing around of people getting sick and dying from it. Sure, eating raw eggs always comes with the risk of salmonella or E. coli, but so does eating Chipotle or having a salad that was grown on a farm where sick chickens rolled around on all of the greens.

I’m so tired of everything being “dangerous.” Dear 21^st century, you’ve already taken everything I loved from my childhood away from my kids, like riding in the way back of the car without a seat belt, playing barefoot outside with no parental supervision until the streetlights come on, and Pluto’s status as a planet. You can’t have my raw cookie dough!

If the world keeps this up, our kids will all be inhabiting the planet in plastic bubbles rolling around the cities, repeatedly bumping into buildings like hamsters in hamster balls. Let’s be realistic here, there are far more dangerous things than licking cookie dough off the beaters, like:

1. Running down the stairs with socks on—might as well be tiny little surfboards used to sail down a flight of stairs and right into the ER for a cast, or three.

2. Using safety scissors. Those things can still cut.

3. Opening a tube of Pillsbury anything. The anxiety alone is enough to cause a stress-induced heart attack.

4. Clowns. Ever read a little story called, It?

5. The 2016 presidential candidates. If I need to elaborate on any part of this, you need to climb out from under that rock you’ve been living under.

6. Getting into the bathtub—and not slipping on the slick, fiberglass edge, going face-first into the bathwater.

7. Getting out of the bathtub—and not slipping on the slick, fiberglass edge, going ass-first into a body cast.

8. Stepping on small plastic farm animals. You won’t die, but you’ll wish you could.

9. Roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Dark + fire + metal sticks with sharp points + 25,000-degree marshmallows = story on the 9 o’clock news.

10. Roller skating. They are shoes on wheels, with a rubber eraser on the back.

11. Not waiting for hot cocoa to cool down. Raw cookie dough would never require you to get a skin graft on your tongue.

12. Touching your pet’s food and not washing your hands.

13. Touching your pet.

14. Jumping on the bed. It’s all fun and games until Mom or Dad joins in and torpedoes little Suzie into the dresser.

15. Eating a Dum Dums lollipop while running around the playground. Let’s see how “safe” that poly-soft flooring is when your kid goes face-down and that Dum Dums gets lodged in his windpipe.

16. Riding a bike with sandals, or barefoot. Because pavement is the sandpaper of roads.

17. Bunk beds. One elevated bed, three toddlers with zero concept of gravity and physics.

18. Giant trampolines. Also known as “the fastest way to knock out teeth with your own knees or feet.”

19. Walking around with blankets or buckets on their heads. What could go wrong?

20. Drinking water from the plastic K-Mart pool you filled with hose water in 90-degree weather.

Do you know how many people successfully eat cookie dough and don’t die? I’d be willing to bet the sick-chicken farm that opening a tube of Pillsbury Poppin’ Fresh dough leads to more eye-related injuries or psychological setbacks than raw cookie dough has diarrhea-inducing, abdominal cramping side effects.

So, cookie dough, I don’t care what the “experts” say. I don’t care about that teeny-tiny fraction of a statistic. You’ll always be more than just a potential Petri dish of salmonella to me and my kiddos. In 20 years, you’ll know my kids from everyone else. They’ll be the ones licking the batter and rolling around Colorado Boulevard in their hamster balls. We’re gonna keep on loving you, cookie dough. It’s the only thing we wanna do (and maybe use a giant hamster ball to bounce on a trampoline).