Don’t play wit hthe mucky pups

That was the voice of Franz Josef Degenhardt — lawyer, songwriter, rebel.
He shaped Germany’s protest-song era and, with this tune, gave the middle class a gentle slap in the face.
His message? A warning disguised as advice: Don’t mix with the poor, the loud, the unruly — they might make you think.

“Stick with the decent ones,” my own father used to say.
“Don’t hang around with the rough kids.”

Adaptation, it seems, was once a survival strategy.
In prehistoric times, blending in kept you from becoming the tiger’s lunch.
Invisible meant alive.
But in the 21st century, that same instinct to conform has turned into something darker:
a fear of standing out, of questioning, of getting your hands dirty.

Adaptation means many things — but rarely something good.
Imagine a world where only the well-behaved get to paint, sing, or write.
No rule-breakers, no eccentrics, no political mavericks.
Just polite, polished people nodding in rhythm to mediocrity.
Welcome to the United States of Normality.

Where would we be without the odd ones —
the inventors, the dreamers, the loud, the loving, the utterly unmanageable?
Probably still stuck in the caves, politely discussing fire safety.

Yes, the misfits are annoying.
They mess with our comfort zones.
But how long can comfort last if nothing moves outside the norm?

Dirty kids are messy.
They question.
They improvise.
They laugh at rules — not because they hate order, but because they love freedom.
And maybe that’s the true dirt respectable people can’t wash off:
the stain of humanity itself.

Whoever fears the dirt
will never understand
who creates it.

So let’s play with the mucky pups again.
The world might just thank us for it.