Favourite Books

  • The Green Mile
  • Animal Farm
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Lord of the Rings
  • To Kill a Mockingbird

Tuesday 1 March 2016

Dirt..Nature's Best Defence!

  Well..can you tell I have time on my hands? Totally enjoying this pause in what was a nasty hamster wheel routine.
  I got to thinking..(the whole damn family cringes when I say this)..What's wrong with kids today? Every second kid has some sort of allergy, they have skin issues, learning issues, lactose issues, issues,issues,issues...
  Was this around when I was young? If it was, I certainly didn't hear about it. I swear I was allergic to school and green beans, but..no one seemed to care, so I had to suffer through both. I survived! I was very allergic to stinging nettles, but...so was every other person I knew, so..we stayed away from them, or, we beat each other with them, causing a horrid bout of itching and scratching, and pinkish coloured skin, from the only thing that dulled the pain a tiny bit. I never once heard of a friend who could not eat bread or drink milk. There definitely was never a single soul who could not hork down a bowl of ice cream, and suffer for it. There was stuff I absolutely hated, like squash, but that was just the taste and consistency, no rash or throat swelling occurred. No child had an epi-pen, and trust me, we were always collecting bees and hornets in jars, with flowers..not one friend died during these collections.
  We had dirt under our fingernails at all summer, because we spend every moment possible outdoors. We ate vegetables out of gardens coated in dirt...perhaps there may have been a moment of choking, when one almost got caught raiding carrots, but..I cannot recall hearing a friend recollect how they were sick to their stomach the morning after chowing down. We chewed sap off the trees (Yes, we were desperate) we ate almost any type of berry we found(honest to goodness I KNOW those thimble berries had a spider or two on them), we chewed sour leaves, we dared each other to try pretty much anything out in the bush...no one died..no one had to be flown out with stomach issues, no one needed antibiotics...
  We wandered about with rubber thongs on our feet (yes the original thongs) in the bush, through area with old building that had fallen to the ground, more than one kid stepped on rusty old nails..I lost count of how many I tread upon. I do think I got a shot once for tetanus..but no appendages were lost. We climbed trees, we fell out of trees, we fell off bikes (without helmets or knee pads). We crawled around in old buildings with leaky old containers, (which generally were poured out, just for investigative purposes). Apparently our world was coated in Asbestos, and a sh*tload of other stuff that now has been reported to be deadly to humans...strangely the group of folks I grew up with, for the most part, are still alive and kicking pretty hard.
  We drank our pop out of glass bottles, and carried our groceries home in paper bags..or perhaps if there was a large enough amount, a cardboard box. My girlfriend and her family ate hamburger raw (hey, I wasn't about to try, but they loved it). Yep..not once did I ever hear of salmonella...salmon yes, nella nope! Our popsicles came wrapped in paper, our icecream came in cardboard containers. Water, that came out of a tap or a hose. We ate paper..yep..again..desperate..actually because candy and icecream were not a daily treat, we did this to ensure we got every morsel. We licked our hands if that popsicle dripped onto our skin..dirt and all..
  Sure we had things like impetigo, and I remember ringworm going around once, we never ever had a case of lice, and some of us lucky ones, would suffer sties on our eyes, but...not a soul I know grew up without being able to stand close to peanut butter! Good Gosh..allergic to peanuts..how bloody awful! WTF is in a peanut?
  So..besides that nasty evil, I feel has been one of the worst environmental disasters (plastic)..maybe swallowing dirt, is why those who grew up back in my day, seem to be made from tougher stuff? Not about to eat dirt now..sadly our dirt was way cleaner than most you will find today in your backyard..yep..clean dirt....Everything back then was cleaner...cleaner air, cleaner water, cleaner food..additives I think equal allergies..time to get back to the basics..a little dirt a little water, and everything, even people will grow stronger..no need to add things to make them last longer..that is not natural!
(Think I am sort of repeating, however, this world of crap food, and crap clothing, with everything made in a test tube, is one of the biggest human errors even committed.)

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