Almost daily, the Dr. Oz show talks about harmful bacteria found in homes. (Flushing your toilet, for instance, can supposedly propel e coli bacteria up to twelve feet through the air to hit your shower cap or your toothbrush. Obviously, they don't know MY toilet!) What's going on here? Are we raising a generation of germophobes? I mean, studies are showing that allergies and asthma are on the upswing because our homes are becoming TOO clean and bodies haven't had the chance to create immunities. (They haven't seen MY home, either!)
Well...I'm here to tell you that I should have croaked years ago! Out of sheer ignorance, we did things as kids for which modern society would have jailed my parents. Such as? We ate things straight out of the garden--just brushed off the dirt and popped 'em in our mouths. We followed road repair trucks and picked up hot road tar to chew on. We danced in the streets behind the mosquito abatement trucks that were fogging for mosquitos. We played with the little balls of mercury that came out of broken glass thermometers. We ate our steaks rare and our eggs sunnyside up. I walked barefoot all summer and often picked little pieces of glass out of my feet...and kept on walking. I only washed my hands when my parents MADE me. I even cleaned little cuts with spit.
Organic? What's that supposed to mean?? I thought it referred to food items that are grown or raised without pesticides or hormones...but this morning on TV, there was a dog playing on an "organic" dog bed and a child playing with "organic" toys. Hmmm... Maybe we need to take a lesson from my parents' generation for Earth Day. During the Great Depression, they did without. They didn't waste things--food, especially. They used what they had or did without. They didn't paralyze their kids with adult issues and warnings about how this thing or that thing would kill them or harm them. Good thing, too! I would never have survived childhood, had I known!
No comments:
Post a Comment