Mucking Around In The Mud

“Summer time and the living is easy…”.  Children are out of school and parents are pulling their hair out while it storms in parts of the country keeping everyone inside.

So, what do you get when you mix children and summer rain?   You get a whole lot of fun in the mud.    Mud puddles are magnates.  If you doubt this, watch a child or dog after a good rain.  They will go out of their way to jump in the middle of the biggest puddle making as big a splash as possible. We used to have a leaking sprinkler head that made a huge puddle.  I would watch as our dog made a bee-line for it and splashed until she was soaked and caked with mud.  She always had a happy, goofy look on her face when she finished. The look on my face was not happy or goofy.

Recently, I saw a picture of someone covered in mud.  I mean they looked like a mud sculpture they were so completely covered.  I clicked on the story to find it had to do with a mud festival up north.  I was intrigued. Were there more mud festivals, you bet.  I found celebrations involving mud all over the globe. 

Reading about the celebrations of mud I thought about all the fun I had as a child making mud pies, squishing it between my bare toes and yes, throwing a big handful on someone.  Today mud is used in spas.  Most of us have watched a scene where the character(s) are sitting in a tub of mud, or laying down swathed in robes with mud all over their face.  I, myself, use a powdered mud product I mix and put on my face.  I have to say, it does pull the impurities out of my skin.  Maybe I should try a full body mud treatment.

Children know instinctively what to do with mud, but for those of us without imaginations there are web sites dedicated to activities involving mud.  Children love the stuff and according to the pictures I saw of celebrations and festivals around the world dedicated to mud, the fun doesn’t stop in childhood.

A neighbor told me about how she and her cousins used a muddy field, a tractor and skis or a boogie board to go, as she called it, Redneck skiing.  It sounded like fun.  Guys and I guess gals too put huge tires on their trucks and head on over to the local mud ranch to sling  as much mud as their trucks can muster.  

That’s all for today until next time take off your shoes the next time it rains and be a kid, run without abandon through the nearest mud puddle, you’ll be glad you did.