I was talking last Friday to Pete Damato of our advertising department about Paris Hilton being released from jail due to what was reported to be a medical condition.

Pete reminded me of the days of our youth when we’d get a dinger playing ball. The other players would yell, “Put some mud on it.”

Mud was the universal cure for what ailed us in childhood in those days. Bee sting? Mud! Scrape? Mud! Cut? Mud! Concussion? Mud!

Some of you reading this are getting a bit horrified by now. Mud? Didn’t you fools know that there are anthrax spores in mud?

To be honest, no, we didn’t know. We didn’t suspect. We had not a solitary clue. Mud, as far as we were concerned, was just mud.

Furthermore, if anthrax in mud was such a serious health issue, a lot of us old folks would be dead about now.

We became highly acquainted with mud and all its restorative powers. Mud, when it dried, acted somewhat like a desiccant, drawing moisture from the skin and, we believed, the wound.

But the glories of mud were not strictly limited to medical properties. Mud had many uses for children of those days.

Mud pies were the first culinary creation for little girls. You weren’t supposed to eat the stuff, but I would bet the farm that some kids did, or at least tried to.

Little boys used the stuff to build dams in ditches to trap runoff from rain storms. How many engineering careers were built on mud dams constructed in youth?

My oldest son, Paul, built mud dams that engineers would have marveled over, complete with spillways.

He was upset that he could not figure out a way to build sluice gates and power generators.

We could drive across the Conowingo Dam and he would suddenly forget to ask, “Are we there yet,” so wrapped up in the glories of dam engineering.

He never did become a hydraulics engineer, but that was due more to inability to master math than any lack of experience in the mud medium.

Generations of kids not only played in dirt and mud, but reveled in it. We never feared anthrax until demented morons conceived the idea of sending the stuff through the mail to kill people, and it’s worth pointing out that the anthrax they mailed was laboratory-produced and did not come from mud or dirt.

If we got dirt on our food, adults would admonish, “Go ahead and eat it; a little dirt never hurt anybody.”

And so we grew up without contracting anthrax, worms, lockjaw, or any other illness that could be traced to mud or dirt.

Eventually we outgrew our desire to wallow in mud. It is hard on clothing. It takes time to wash off. It’s considered gauche to show up at work streaked with mud, mud in the hair, and mud under the fingernails.

And it’s not polite to sling mud, literally or otherwise.

But I wonder. Many animals wallow in mud, and I have to presume they would not do it if it was all that bad. If it were that bad, natural selection would have stopped the practice in its tracks.

So, dear Paris Hilton, put some mud on it and get on with life. It won’t be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.