Monday, April 7, 2008

www.whiteville.com

By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff writer

I was not surprised at the most recent report speculating that antibacterial lotions and soaps might be making kids and adults more prone to illness.

Were my mother still alive, I would be tempted to crow that for once, she was wrong – one can be too clean, after all.

As a child, I had an affinity for dirt, whether dry or mixed with water, creating that wonderful substance known as mud. As a grownup, I’ve never been afraid to get my hands dirty, and as a reporter, I’ve been assigned to dig up dirt on certain subjects, but that’s a column for another day. I’m talking about real dirt, not the metaphorical kind that makes headlines.

You can do a lot with dirt; the right dirt can grow things. Other kinds of dirt filter harmful chemicals out of the ground water. There is nothing as happy as my dogs when they can dig in the dirt, and nothing as complacent as Sam the Pig as he flops contentedly in a trench of dirt and awaits a belly-run from Miss Rhonda.

Rub dirt on a vehicle can signify someone who works for a living; dirt on one’s shoes means you aren’t afraid to go off the concrete.

In my opinion, most of those highly touted medical studies are, as reliable as political opinion polls. In other words, they’re like the weather in southeastern North Carolina–if you don’t like it, just wait 20 minutes.

But this time, I was actually glad to see a medical study that said our children are getting sick in part because they may be too sanitary.

A squeaky clean child to me is like a dog that’s never scratched a flea: unnatural. Children need to be able to run around outside and play, not be cooped up in a sanitized climate-controlled test tube of a room. If you run around outside, you learn about skinned knees and bruised elbows, and yes, you will get dirty.

I was famous as a child for my ability to get dirty. Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoons had nothing on me. I think my biggest coup was when I found the water hose, created a virtual swamp in the sideyard of our old house, and became so dirty Mother had to use the hose on me before allowing me inside, where I was unceremoniously dumped in the bathtub, scrubbed nearly raw, then re-introduced to my old nemesis the fly-swatter.

Tingling nether region aside, it was worth it.

The dirt of my “swamp” produced coins, a silver spoon or two (showing that others had dug in that dirt), a mysterious and scary hog bone, and the piece de resistance, an 1885 silver dollar which I still have and treasure.

My friends and I were never happier than when we could play in the dark rich loam under the big old magnolia tree (gone now, sadly, since it bothered the parking lot which replaced our wonderful old house). Generations of children had played under that tree, and more than one lost a pocketknife, a penny or a nickel whilst climbing the chain spiked to the tree. The chain, by the way, was put there by the father of a boy with one withered arm. The boy was long since grown old and passed away by the time I climbed that wonderful tree, and the bark grown thick around the spikes that held the chain in place, but those links allowed “Crippled Joe” to play alongside his friends – and I’m pretty sure he too, enjoyed the simple pleasures of dirt.

Without dirt, there could never be baseball or football or basketball games on corner lots in small towns where passersby used to stop to enjoy the game. Without dirt, you’d have a hard time digging fishing worms. Farmers, loggers and country store philosophers would have nothing to clean from under their fingernails with a pocketknife whilst contemplating a serious answer to a pressing question.

A girl or young woman’s reaction to dirt is still, with some young men, the litmus test for marriage potential; if she’s scared of dirt, she might not be wife-material.

If she is the type to worry about washing later, she might be a keeper. If she doesn’t worry about washing at all, move on to the next candidate.

I’m sure that, sometime in the next few months, someone will come out with another expert study that contradicts the one stating we’re too clean for our own good.

Until then, I’m going to be happy that kids can enjoy dirt again–even if their mothers don’t approve, at least they have the endorsement of the experts.