*beep*

Last Sunday we accompanied my dad to one of the few events that pulls him out of his hermitage: A Gem and Rock Show.

I mentioned the man has several eccentric compulsions…. obscure great-war memorabilia, bladed weaponry, flashlights, figure study books and …. rocks… of which he has many…

I’ve always found them aesthetically interesting… I used plenty for form studies in school…. But it’s really only within the last couple of years I’ve cultivated something I can best explain as a “deeper respect” for stuff like fossils, crystals, geodes, etc.

I don’t think you can’t even begin to start wrapping your head around concepts like “geological time” until you’re in your thirties.

Now – I may never reach a wise-enough age to wrap my head around the EXTREMELY STRANGE CULT which is “Gem Show People”.

These exhibitions are usually staged in community center gymnasiums and feature a maze of tables with vendors selling… well…. yeah…. “rocks and stuff.”

Some are coke-bottle-glass-eyed geology majors who say things like “metamorphic” and “striated sentiments”… Others are retired men with Dremel tools and a serious penchant for carving toy-dogs out of hunks of jade…. Others are simply called “rock hounds” and look like extras from Deliverance.

My father seemed to be on a first-name, or at least creepy masonic-secret-society vibe first-name basis with everyone at the show.

We walked the show… bought a bowl cut from (?)…. and fought off wild thoughts of my father being part of some sort of subterranean cult.

*click*

*dial tone*