My Geode

I’ve wanted to learn about geodes for a long time, since I was a kid. I’ve always been fascinated by their secretive nature. They live on the ground in the dirt, disguised, and it’s only when they are recognized that their true nature comes to light.

Yesterday my friend Lisa brought me my first geode. She’d pulled it from a bucket at the gem show in Joshua Tree. She said this one was from Mexico. She brought it, along with a lethal looking hammer, into our office — a sleek and sophisticated ad agency.

After lunch we took the geode outside and crouched down beside it — heads together while I tapped at the rock as gently as I could with the big hammer. Just then we heard someone come outside and say “I don’t want to know.” It was our boss. Of course it was.

Lisa said “It’s a Geode!” and I said “It’s not firecrackers!” We’re both really nervous around the boss. He said it looked like we were burning ants and we laughed. I’m sure he’ll forget this ever happened in a decade or so.

I tapped the rock again and it cracked so I pulled it apart with my hands. It felt a little like I had superpowers. Like the time I went to Universal Studios when I was a kid and threw the giant TV boulders around and discovered they were made of styrofoam and that that’s why they bounced on the Bionic Man.

When the rock was open in my hands it didn’t even feel like a rock anymore. It had become fragile and precious. I put one half of the geode on my desk and the other on Lisa’s and later, when a co-worker’s little girl came by I showed it to her — holding it out so she could see it but not break it, and told her that I thought this was where fairy’s might live.