Dirt Day

 When kids ask, I tell them that I am as old as dirt. 

This is an exaggeration, of course, since dirt was around for quite a while before I showed up. I can say with relative certainty that I have moved my share of dirt. Mostly from one place to another, but also smoothing it out as I make me way across the surface of my home planet. 

I was alive when the Beatles were recording the music that would become a forever and always. I can remember when there was a somewhat legitimate discussion to be had about whether the Monkees were a better band than John, Paul, George and Ringo. 

I used to worry about being drafted into the Army. I watched a war in Vietnam on television. I understood just how bad things could get when the powers that be stopped listening to the people. My parents let our hair grow long and my mom sewed us dashikis. 

I saw some of the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by success, failure and assassin's bullets. I'm now old enough that all of this can be referred to as "the good old days." Moon landings. A U.S. President resigns. Televisions were clunky boxes that weren't necessarily in color. We watched until the end of the broadcasting day. 

I knew that littering was bad, but recycling cans and bottle was a discovery we made when we stumbled on the notion of ecology. The pollution we had been spewing into the air became a concern and the waterways stopped carrying away our debris. I grew up with a sense that the world was actually a fragile place. If we weren't careful, we might just use it up. 

Watergate, holes in the ozone layer, wars that don't seem to end including the undeclared war we seem to be waging against one another in the shopping malls, schools, churches and parking lots. And yet, I continue to find interest in exploring each new day. There are still so many people to meet. There are still so many songs left to sing. Some of them are by the Monkees. 

And there's still all that dirt left to redistribute.