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I encountered my co-worker Devvi as I got back to my desk. “What are you doing with a bunch of rocks?” she asked.
“Oh, I was running low” I explained, opening the lid to a box on my desk and putting the several stones in my hand into the box with the others.
“Yeah,” she replied, watching as I removed the ones in my pockets and added them to the collective. “You’re running low alright.”
Now, I don’t mean to brag, but I’m really mother-fucking good at skipping stones, probably better than you. Ever since I learned as a child, that’s simply what I do at a shoreline. It’s very relaxing, and I use it to unwind. The rocky banks of the two creeks nearby work are one of my favorite benefits of the job. I don’t know if I would have made it as long as I have if I didn’t spend my break times at the water.
Forget about the serenity of the rippling brook. The peaceful tranquility of the whirling eddies mean nothing to me. I can’t see them, I spend almost my entire time with my neck craned downward looking at the rocks along the shore, searching for the roundest, flattest rocks I can find. Though the larger ones usually skip more dramatically, I prefer stones that fit in my palm. And the search for these extend far beyond the shoreline. I’ll steal these from construction sites, driveways or gravel roads when no one is looking and quietly slip them into my lumpy pockets and carry them with me until I get an opportunity to skip them along a small Parisian canal like the one where my goldfish was liberated when I was a child.
No wait… that’s not me, that’s Amélie. But I do grab stones wherever I find them.
My children know of my love for the art of stone-skipping, and even used the theme for a Father’s Day gift a few years ago. They collected dozens of great skipping stones and put them in a hand-decorated box. This is the box I keep on my desk at work. It’s wonderful for grabbing a couple rocks and going down to the pond on those days that I’m too busy to make it to the creek. It’s also nice just to open the box from time to time on a particularly stressful day, and look at the beautiful, round, smooth stones and feel better about the world in general.
And so I make sure to keep the box well-stocked. People look at me like I’m crazy… walking around the office with a bunch of rocks, looking at the stones and sighing peacefully.
…the freaks.
While leaving for a walk on my morning break, I saw a friend of mine (she works in the same building) outside smoking. She had her back turned to me, and when I spoke to her she was quite startled.
“Oh, Sorry I scared you,” I said (laughing).
“Yeah,” she replied, “I don’t think so. ‘Boo’ isn’t something you say to someone when you’re NOT trying to scare them!”
“Oh, Right… Kinda gave myself away then, didn’t I?”
“You are such a poop!”
“Well, you…” I paused. “…hold the phone! Did you just call me a ‘poop’?”
“Yeah!” she said. “It’s better than calling you a ’shit’, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said, “actually I don’t think it is. I’ve been called a ’shit’ a lot of times… even a ‘turd’ now and then, but never a ‘poop’. …I feel like I’ve been demoted.”
The two top movies of early summer are about a penguin surfer and about a silver surfer… so the joke is inevitable, right?
Adam
