I Had Some Sort of Long Witty Title Here, Like a Modern Band’s Song Title, But I Forgot It
Supposedly, and don’t quote me on this, there’s only two places in the world where the rocks are weird like this.
I think the other one’s in Montana. Or Colorado. One of them; let’s face it, anything between here and California is just Y’Know, Out West Somewhere to me. Not a man of the world, me.
Maybe one day. When I’m rich off the fabulous prizes and fat paydays I pull from your pockets with my brain.
Ha.
Heh.
No, maybe not even then.
There’s a bus full of school kids here. High school, maybe, or eighth grade, I dunno. I’m frankly terrible at telling people’s ages. Supposedly, that’s a minor sign of Asperger’s, or whatever that weird thinking man’s autism is called. It’s the new ADD for kids, I think. Your kid isn’t like everyone else’s, but not in a bouncing-off-the-walls sort of way? Must be Asperser’s.
Your kid must have Asperger’s, because he’s not like the other kids. Except that’s what they said about the other kids.
Ssh. They can’t tell you’re pulling that out of your ass if you write it with enough cynical authority. Our little secret.
I sit on a rock off to the side and sketch the scenery. Another little secret, just between us girls: I’m also avoiding the whatever-school kids swarming the rocks with hammers. They’ve nothing to do with me, not at my age. Although they were pretty much nothing to do with me when I was one of them.
It’s too nice a day to be thinking like this. And it is. Not that sad, wistful nice either, like the smile of the anemic older sister character in a Japanese cartoon. No, this is legitimate, actual Nice Weather We’re Having nice. Blue skies and rocky seas. Ahh, Ingles, life is grand.
So I sketch, and I listen to the kids. The background noise. I forgot my world-blocking headphones back home. I’ll even take extra-special-being-social credit and say it was on purpose. That’s probably not a lie.
Shout shout, clang clang. The rocks here ring like metal when you hit them with hammers. That’s what’s special about this place. Here and Colotanawhatever out west, that’s it and that’s all. You hit the rocks with hammers and they go metalbangclang instead of rockhitclink.
I brought a little hammer, and when the kids leave, I’ll deftly leap from rock to rock until I feel like using my little hammer on a rock to make clangy sounds.
When I leap, I keep my hands in my pockets. Because I’m a show off.
And because I never do trip.
When I’m doing my mountain goat routine later, I’ll find a rock that looks sort of like the upper bit of a face, with a sad brown eye (not the gutter kind) looking up. And me being a well-read gentleman and/or scholar, I’ll think about Shelly’s Ozymandias. Shattered visages and stone leg stumps.
And then me being me, I’ll think about that bit from one of Peter David’s Hulk issues. “Do you know Shelly, Rick? Ozymandias? The Leader says he does, but that’s no surprise”. Something like that.
And after that, I’ll think about how a great fuckton of weird rocks are just sort of…sitting out there, in the middle of the woods, with no credible source for them that I can see with my keen logical eye. And I’ll make up stories in my head about space aliens and/or stone titans and/or the temples of strange peoples long gone and/or whatever, because that’s what I do.
On my way out of the park, I’ll randomly pick up a stone on the trail that will have the ringing properties of the bigger rocks that it’s a fair bit away from.
It will not be luck, fate, or magic. It will be a souvenir, and I’ll sort of forget about it when it sits on my kitchen table for a few months.
Anyway, that’s all in the near-future (and here, I’m tempted to make a song reference about how the future’s not uncertain, but the end is near. But it felt hamfisted and I let it go. Besides, I always get The Doors and The Who mixed up, and have faced mockery for it).
In the present, I’m sketching a tree with a micron (pencils go to hell), and half listening to the background noise of the slightly younger.
There’s a thud. Metal on…not rock. And a scream, high and stung.
And then some girl yells “That was a rock!” and I just about piss myself laughing.
It is an actual nice day.
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