Eat dirt!

The Dropped KitKat Bar of Doom

Is this the end?

Most people I know don’t eat what falls on the floor. For me, if I pick it up and it doesn’t have all fuzz clinging to it, it’s fine. Although many people find this practice repulsive and wrinkle up their noses when they see me thus engaged, mom taught me, “You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die.” Therefore, I always figured dirt was pretty safe. Later, I learned that it gives the immune system a much needed workout. Dirt consumption may well account for my current state of pretty-good-for-a-seventy-two-year-old health.

I assume she meant peck as in peck of pickled peppers and not peck as in hen-peck, which in this context would refer to the quantity a hen would pick up with one peck, not your wife reminding you to mow the lawn.

For the sake of anyone who is like “WTF?” after reading the above paragraph, one who is “hen-pecked” is one forever being pestered by their wife. “Peck as in peck of pickled peppers” refers to both the nursery rhyme/tongue-twister —

PeterPiperpickedapeckofpickeledpeppersIfPeterPiperpickedapeckofpickeledpepperswhereisthepeckofpickledpeppersPeterPiperpicked?

— and to the unit of dry measure known as a peck. 1 peck = 8 dry quarts, or 537.6 cubic inches. I learned this in fourth grade but never had occasion to make use of this profound knowledge until now.

Since even the beak of the greatest of hens could not accommodate such a peck, mom must have meant Peter Piper peck and not hen peck, otherwise, I’d already be dead.

What’s a peck like really? That is, what does it look like? 540 cubic inches that is like a box 6" X 9" X 10". Oh shit. 6" X 9" X 10" is like shoe box size. Bigger, but not that much bigger. What if as a result of my rampant shameless dropped food eating I’m closing in on my peck?

Formerly, I would not have been so morbid as to think this way, but I am getting on in years. Did mom mean the instant the scale tips over to one peck of ingested dirt it’s curtains? Or that a person, in general, can hardly get away with not ingesting at least 540 cubic inches of dirt?

I have a considerable number of dirt eating years behind me. If she meant the former, perhaps one more KitKat bar from the floor and poof! My deeds on one side of the Great Scale, a feather on the other. Good luck with that, BOF!

It’s not like I’ve been keeping track of how much dirt I’ve been eating all these 72 years. So with that in mind, I can’t be too careful.

Sources of existential angst:

How exacting is God? Was mom full of split pea soup?¹ Would Mrs. Robinson be proud of me for remembering what a peck was all these 62 years on?² Had it not been for that tongue-twister, would I now have any peck memory at all?

It is these considerations that trouble my sleep.

¹ Split pea soup spilled on the floor is irretrievable. Even I would not try to eat soup from the floor.

² That is, I remembered there was a unit of dry measure called a peck. The details I got from professor Google.

Many thanks to Gary Chapin and Amy Sea.

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