The Dirty Truth

When I was a kid, I enjoyed nothing more than playing in the dirt. At my grandmother's house, there was a shady corner in the backyard where grass refused to grow. When I was just a little tyke, we took our little shovels and pails out there and dug a hole big enough for us to lie in. Then to our mother's horror, we got the hose and filled the hole with water to make a "swimming pool." I'm sure we were a sight to behold!

Then there was making mudpies and sand castles and digging for treasure and burying treasures and all sorts of other neat things to do with dirt. Sometimes Grandma helped us plant a dried bean in a little cup of dirt so we could watch it sprout. We "helped" Grandpa every spring when he turned up his garden.

There was sandy dirt which was good for digging in and there was clay which was good for mudpies. There was black dirt and red dirt. The red dirt left stains on us. The black dirt mixed with our sweat and formed little black beads in the crinkles of our necks. We were quite the dirt experts.

Kids now evidently don't know what dirt is, because London has a new museum exhibit . . . "Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life." It "explores the good and bad of dirt." It explains to people that "soil" as in "soiled sheets" is bad; but "soil" as in where we plant our seeds is good. I swear this is not an April Fool prank. The dirty truth is that we have sunk to a new low when we have to have a museum exhibit to explain "dirt"!

"Exhibit digs into pros, cons of humanity's ties to dirt." The Dallas Morning News; March 27, 2011; p. 15A.