MY FASCINATION WITH ROCKS.

What a shame that I didn't become a geologist. As a child, i loved rock collecting. Having heard about how gold, diamonds, and other precious jewels were found under the earth, I thought I might find some precious stones too. I never did but the ones I found still fascinated me.


When I was about five years old, I found a pinkish sort of pebble along the side of the road. I ran home and showed my mother. "This is a piece of feldspar, Mom said as she examined the squarish mineral.  That rock held my attention for quite a few days. The shininess of its sides and the colour thrilled me.


When I was sent to Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind, I found many exciting varieties. Through various adults, I learned about sandstone,quartz, and slate. British Columbia had more varieties of stones than Alberta due to its geological heritage. As the long years passed at that institution, I felt amazed at the colours and textures of the rocks I found.


I felt particularly excited by a palm-sized rock I found behind the school. It was black and very heavy. I thought it might be a meteorite so I showed it to my grade four teacher. She knew a geologist who might be able to identify the type of rock it was. She told me a few weeks later that it wasn't a meteorite but a lump of low-grade iron ore. Unfortunately, I lost it to the cleaning staff. I saw it sitting on the floor by my bed but I assumed I could put it away later. I forgot about it and when I came back from classes, it was gone.


The landscape people also deprived me of a special bolder that I discovered. It was brick red and about the size of my head. I foolishly left it on the lawn and when I tried to show it to my teacher the next day, it was gone. I felt so embarrassed, even though the teacher understood what happened.


Then I made a foolish mistake. A friend gave me a commercially-packaged rock collection. When my Cub Scout troop were told to make a rock collection by the pack leader, I stupidly entered the collection I was given. Not only was I lectured about lying but the leader confiscated my collection.


I still admire rock gardens and the occasional pretty stone that I find but my passion for rock collecting has long passed.  Even so, I remember the happy hours I spent smashing pebbles with bigger stones to make colourful sand and searching the road for fascinating bits of gravel. It kept me from dwelling on the fact that I was five-hundred miles from home and I wouldn't go back there until the next Christmas or summer.


I wrote more about my rock collecting activities, and how I got into trouble because of them, in Deliverance from Jericho: Six Years in a Blind School. More information about it and my previous book can be found on the left side of this page. How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity is my newest book. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers distribute e-book and paperback versions of it

PARENTS MUST BE STRONG.

It's a fact of life that children, especially boys, have accidents. They skin knees, burn their fingers, get scratched, and suffer a thousand other injuries. Distressing though it may be to a mother, these things happen.

In Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), I wrote about how completely unprepared my mom was when I had an accident in the neighbour's yard.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Another good example of Mom's inability to handle medical misfortunes happened in the first week of August. Diane and I were with the MacLeans in their front yard early one evening.

"Let's play piggyback," I suggested and everyone enthusiastically agreed. I climbed on Diane's back, riding her around the yard. Then we switched places.

I was doing my best to "giddy up" when I stumbled. Reflexively, I put out my left arm to shield myself from the fall. Unfortunately, that broke one of the bones between my elbow and wrist. I howled in pain as everybody stared. Diane helped me up and we both walked as briskly as possible to the house. I held my broken arm out to keep it from bumping against my side.

"Just rub it and it'll get better," Diane said as she gave it a vigorous massage. New waves of pain shot up my arm, causing me to howl even more as we walked through the side door of our house.

I walked carefully downstairs and laid on my bed, hoping my arm was only sprained. Knowing how hysterical Mom became when confronted with injuries, I thought I would leave it alone and wait for the swelling to go down.

"You get up here right now!" Mom bellowed from the upstairs landing.

"I'll be alright, Mom. I just need to lie down for a while." As Mom continued to holler at me, I reluctantly climbed the stairs.

She became frantic, as I feared, when she saw my arm, which obviously appeared broken. After she called the hospital, she raced to the living room door and yelled loud enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear, "You damn stupid kids broke Brucey's arm!" Fortunately, Dad was home at the time of my accident. He drove Mom and I to the emergency door of the hospital.

"Remove your trousers," a nurse said as I sat on the examining table. When I did so and handed them to her, a shower of rocks tumbled out of my pockets. I had gathered some interesting specimens before going to my neighbour's yard to play.

"I'm so sorry for the mess," Mom said. "My boy likes to collect rocks and things. You know how boys are." She had that tone in her voice which hinted that I was in big trouble later for humiliating her.

"Don't worry," the nurse soothed, "This sort of thing happens here all the time."

The anesthetist administered a general anesthetic and I went under immediately. I awoke in a dark room with my arm inside a hard and heavy object. "So this is a cast," I thought as I examined it with the fingers of my free hand. Then I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, a nurse woke me. "How did you sleep and how's your arm feeling?" she asked after she brought in my breakfast.

"My arm doesn't hurt too much but it feels funny having this cast on," I admitted.

The hospital discharged me that afternoon. Linda danced excitedly around the living room when she saw me, obviously happy to have her big brother home. Diane, However, felt so guilty that she raced downstairs and hid in our bedroom.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. Click here to read more about this compelling story. You may also e-mail me directly if the comment form doesn't work.