The Dirtiest Kid in the World
By Gerri Harvey
With thanks, inspiration and a few borrowed lines from Shel Silverstein's poem
The Dirtiest Man in the World
Oh, I'm Dirty Sid, The World's Dirtiest Kid
I never take baths or showers
I can't see my shirt, it's so covered with dirt
And my ears have enough to grow flowers.
Whenever my mother sends me to bathe
I gingerly get in the tub
I try not to get too much of me wet
And I never "Rub-a-dub-dub"!
The showers are either too hot or too cold
But sometimes I stand there and rinse
I've always felt if I get wet I might melt
So I am pretty hard to convince.
I don't brush my teeth, I don't wash my hair
I try to avoid touching soap
My clothes often reek cuz I wear them all week
And my sneakers stink beyond hope.
I think that my sneakers wouldn't be bad
If I wore socks on my feet now and then
I tried that once, kept them on for 6 months
But they smelled worse than they'd ever been.
I don't wash my face, except once a year
And my nails, I don't scrub or cut them
In my hair can be seen glitter from last Halloween
And my eyelashes stick when I shut them.
The thought of a towel and soap makes me howl
So when people have something to tell me
They don't come up and tell it- they stand back and yell it
I think they're afraid they might smell me.
Now what I want to know, what I want to find out
The changes that need to be made
To change this whole scene and make myself clean
Now that I'm in fifth grade.
So kids can you help me and possibly tell me
I think there's some secret knack
I don't want to stink and I really do think
It's time that I clean up my act!
(A great introduction for the school nurse's hygiene class!)