Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Nature, a strange, beautiful, and creepy beast

As this blog is wont to do, I need to break off into the realm of the odd for a post. As you've read below, we went on vaction for a few days to some of the beautiful places around Lake Superior. During the course of the trip, I was doing a lot of rock hunting. Rocks have an odd place in the relationship of Mr. & Mrs. Jib. One of our rock stories was of a tiny heart shaped stone I had found on a beach for her once upon a time. On this trip, I was tasked with finding her another heart shaped stone. If you've ever been along the shore of Lake Superior near Duluth and Superior, you know that there are a lot of rocks to look through. I was having no luck with the hearts, though. Late in the trip, the lovely Mrs. Jib wandered off to take some pictures, so I went down to the lakeshore to look for interesting rocks. Still, despite my best efforts, I was finding nothing interesting. Eventually she found me, and as she walked towards me on the shore, I looked down and found a rock that stunned me.

If you are the type who doesn't like 'blue' talk, now would be a good time to go to the next post. Because the rock I found looked like a phallus. Actually, that's not entirely correct. It looked like a full set of male genitalia in profile. I picked it up and gave it to her as my rock "offering". This rock, about 4 inches or so long, was hilarious. It was difficult to believe that nature had eroded this rock into this shape. So we took it home with us as a joke. Had the story stopped there, I might not even be sharing it with you, but it turned creepy.

We knew from the get go that this rock had a flaw, a discolorization of sorts, on the side that looked, well, dirty. Neither of us thought much of it. Tonight I had pulled the rock out of my camera bag and had given it to her to store away. It had been set down before being put away, though, and I had a chance to see the rock and its flaw from a distance. It was then that I realized that the shape of the discolorization was nearly an identical replica of the phallus-rock itself. The creepiness began.

Lake Superior is revered by sailors and the local Chippewa for having a spirit of its own. Had I found this rock at any other place, I would not be creeped out at all. But having found it on the shores of Lake Superior, I'm beginning to worry that it is some sort of Lake Superior fertility rock. We've discussed having kids, alternating in the 1-3 range, but I'm now afraid that, because of this rock, I am going to impregnate Mrs. Jib with octuplets just by looking at her. I look at Mrs. Jib frequently, and I now fear that this rock is going to end up giving us somewhere in the vicinity of 13,000 children in the next 15 years. I know Mrs. Jib will one day be a fine mother, but I'm quite sure she will not be pleased to have 13,000 children.

For now, we will hold onto this stone. Hopefully it will be good luck to us, or at least be a long running source of humor. But if we end up with octuplets in the next year sometime, we will be paying someone to take it off of our hands. Quickly.

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