Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of my journal. There are a lot of different, but true, stories in this journal and I like to share some of them with you. Some are not really worth sharing, they’re kind of boring, so we’ll skip those. But let’s see what we can find for today…

It was a nice, though cloudy, summer day when dad and I decided to go rock hunting. No, that hunting, I mean looking for rocks and minerals, mostly minerals. Both of us really enjoyed this particular hobby so it was something nice for us to do together. Dad enjoyed it all through life actually, and so do I, but now it’s a little harder to get out and look for these different rocks and minerals. Anyway, we were at this one spot that proved to be quite good at providing us with some nice mineral samples. Dad found something and was working away at it while I continued looking around. For some reason he felt it would be better that way. Finally he called to me to bring a different chisel to him. So I went back to the car and decided to bring them all, plus another hammer as well.

“Good,” said dad, “hand me that big hammer.” So I did, handle first so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Guess he didn’t notice that and when he turned his head the handle hit him on the forehead and knocked his glasses off. First time today, not bad. “You need to be more careful or you will break those glasses one day,” I reminded him. “Thanks”, was all he said. He started whacking away with the bigger hammer and chisel, but carefully so he wouldn’t break this nice tourmaline crystal. He was just about to hit it a bit harder when the sun got in my eyes, which always makes me sneeze. My sneezes can be quite loud at times. Anyway, I let loose with a very loud sneeze. That’s when dad got up and started walking around holding his hand. “Hurt your hand?”, I asked. Dad just looked. Apparently my sneeze startled him and he missed hitting the chisel and hit his hand instead.

“Why did you yell?,” he asked. “That was a sneeze,” I said. “Bonehead”, said dad. Not sure why he would be enjoying this. He came back and down on his knees again to start chopping away. “Let me help,” I said and moved closer. Now dad yelled. Seems I stepped on his hand. “Odd place to put your hand,” I said. “Bonehead”, was all that dad said. Poor dad, after all that he broke that tourmaline crystal, into several pieces. “Too bad,” I said, “that was a nice one.” I went off looking again. Dad called and said he wanted to have coffee now. Okay with me. I sat on a rock next to dad, but he said to move over to the next rock, it would be safer that way. Strange. “Why did you bring this cup,?” asked dad. “I couldn’t find the cup for your thermos,” I explained. Dad sighed, something he did a lot when we were together.

He tossed my sandwich to me. “This is your sandwich,” I said. “You’re right, toss it back,” he said, so I did. He turned after I tossed it, his eyes got real big and he put his hand up to catch it, but instead he hit his sandwich and it went flying and landed in the pile of rocks. We both looked but couldn’t find it anywhere. “Probably down in among the rocks,” said dad. “Yep, you hit it good,” I said. Dad sighed again as we walked back to our coffee. “Now my coffee is cold,” said dad and he tossed it out, but for some reason he let go of his cup and it smashed against the rocks. “My favorite cup,” dad said quietly. Very strange behavior. I offered to share my cup but dad decided to drink from the thermos. Just as he began to drink I sneezed again. Guess it startled dad again, he spilled coffee all over himself. That was a big sigh that time. Strangely nothing else happened that day, we also didn’t find much. Oh well, maybe next time…

I hope you enjoyed this little adventure as much as we did, and we did get a lot of laughs from it afterward. Have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.