Tuesday – Eating Dirt
Jul. 17th, 2007 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about how important it is that I remember that when my husband is home and my son drops a piece of food on the floor, that I must pretend to be horrified and yank it out of the boy's hand before he eats it. You see, my husband was not brought up the way I was. He was not reared by a woman whose motto was, "I never saw a kid die from eating dirt."
I remember how once, as a very small child, I dropped a cookie on the driveway in front of our house. My mother was standing there talking to the neighbor from across the street, and I ran over to her with the cookie and told her that I had dropped it and that it was dirty. She took the cookie away from me, inspected it closely, rubbed it against the fabric on the leg of her trousers, blew on it, and then handed it back to me.
"There," she said, "It's clean."
So I ate it.
And I didn't die.
Jeff couldn't believe his ears when I told him the story. There is no 5-second rule for him. If anything touches the floor, it becomes hazardous material and must be either thrown away or given to the dog, who is immune to the kind of germs that live on the ground. Jeff's mother cared about that sort of thing, and she taught him to care. Most people seem to care, come to think of it, especially if they are moms. That Woman My Father Is Married To, who my son calls "Grandma," happens to care more than anyone else I've ever met. That Woman sterilizes everything in her kitchen with bleach.
"I know that you call me anal," she tells me, "but I can't help it."
I want to state that I've never called That Woman anal retentive to her face, even though she is exactly the kind of person that Sigmund Freud was talking about when he coined that term. I was raised better than that: if I'm going to be catty and insulting, I will do it behind your back, because that is what people who pretend to be nice do. I called her that in a conversation I had with my kid brother who, at 35 years old, is not above tattling on me. At 37 years old, I am not above wanting to smack him upside the head when he does this. I guess sibling relationships don't change that much, no matter how old you get.
At his grandfather's house, anything that my son drops on the floor is whisked out of his hands before it gets within an inch of his lips. Ironically, That Woman keeps her floors so clean that you really could eat of them if you were so inclined.
I have to admit that this is one case where That Woman may have a point, and my mother may have been wrong. A few years back I saw a program on TV about a child whose family lived in a house built on top of a toxic waste site. The child in the story had a condition known as pica, which is a tendency to dine on things that are not food. She ate a lot of dirt from her backyard, got sick, and died. I remember wanting to call my mom up and tell her about it, and if she had not been dead for years at that point, I would have. I wanted to remind her of all the cookies and crackers that she let me eat after she brushed them off on her clothes and blew on them to get them clean. I wanted to know if she would have changed her mind about this now there was, on record, a kid that died from eating dirt.
"Oh, cool it," she would have told me. "I wouldn't worry. You seem fine to me."
She would be right, too.
Life is too short to waste a perfectly good chocolate chip cookie just because it touched the ground. I have adopted a 5-second rule that lasts about 5 times longer than most other people's 5-second rules. During those 25 seconds, I consider the following: "Did it land in a puddle? Did anyone step on it? Did the dog try to pick it up? Are ants crawling on it? Are we on a known toxic waste site? No? Then hand it here so I can wipe it off on the leg of my jeans and blow on it. There, it's clean."
If I survived having a mom like that, then the odds are that my son will, too.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I remember how once, as a very small child, I dropped a cookie on the driveway in front of our house. My mother was standing there talking to the neighbor from across the street, and I ran over to her with the cookie and told her that I had dropped it and that it was dirty. She took the cookie away from me, inspected it closely, rubbed it against the fabric on the leg of her trousers, blew on it, and then handed it back to me.
"There," she said, "It's clean."
So I ate it.
And I didn't die.
Jeff couldn't believe his ears when I told him the story. There is no 5-second rule for him. If anything touches the floor, it becomes hazardous material and must be either thrown away or given to the dog, who is immune to the kind of germs that live on the ground. Jeff's mother cared about that sort of thing, and she taught him to care. Most people seem to care, come to think of it, especially if they are moms. That Woman My Father Is Married To, who my son calls "Grandma," happens to care more than anyone else I've ever met. That Woman sterilizes everything in her kitchen with bleach.
"I know that you call me anal," she tells me, "but I can't help it."
I want to state that I've never called That Woman anal retentive to her face, even though she is exactly the kind of person that Sigmund Freud was talking about when he coined that term. I was raised better than that: if I'm going to be catty and insulting, I will do it behind your back, because that is what people who pretend to be nice do. I called her that in a conversation I had with my kid brother who, at 35 years old, is not above tattling on me. At 37 years old, I am not above wanting to smack him upside the head when he does this. I guess sibling relationships don't change that much, no matter how old you get.
At his grandfather's house, anything that my son drops on the floor is whisked out of his hands before it gets within an inch of his lips. Ironically, That Woman keeps her floors so clean that you really could eat of them if you were so inclined.
I have to admit that this is one case where That Woman may have a point, and my mother may have been wrong. A few years back I saw a program on TV about a child whose family lived in a house built on top of a toxic waste site. The child in the story had a condition known as pica, which is a tendency to dine on things that are not food. She ate a lot of dirt from her backyard, got sick, and died. I remember wanting to call my mom up and tell her about it, and if she had not been dead for years at that point, I would have. I wanted to remind her of all the cookies and crackers that she let me eat after she brushed them off on her clothes and blew on them to get them clean. I wanted to know if she would have changed her mind about this now there was, on record, a kid that died from eating dirt.
"Oh, cool it," she would have told me. "I wouldn't worry. You seem fine to me."
She would be right, too.
Life is too short to waste a perfectly good chocolate chip cookie just because it touched the ground. I have adopted a 5-second rule that lasts about 5 times longer than most other people's 5-second rules. During those 25 seconds, I consider the following: "Did it land in a puddle? Did anyone step on it? Did the dog try to pick it up? Are ants crawling on it? Are we on a known toxic waste site? No? Then hand it here so I can wipe it off on the leg of my jeans and blow on it. There, it's clean."
If I survived having a mom like that, then the odds are that my son will, too.
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Date: 2007-07-18 02:07 pm (UTC)