Rocks Rock
When I was little, my sister (4 years older than me) and I were playing in our front yard when some unfamiliar local boys asked us to come play a game with them. Side note: This was the late 1970’s so all the childhood rules were different, especially around seat belts, sunscreen, helmets, and kids having unsupervised access to the outdoors and free reign of neighborhoods.
So this group of boys led/lured me and sister to a backyard and told us that we were going to play a fun game together called ‘Dodge Rock’. Yup, you’re right, we should not have gone with strange boys into a strange backyard, plus the nefarious name should have been a major red flag. And I’m certain that I knew of the mildly aggressive game dodge ball because that was one of the staple playground games at school, right next to Red Rover, Freeze Tag, Red Light/Green Light and Sardines.
Adding to this, my sister was older and you’d think that she should have known better and been like, “Sorry boys, no thanks because me and my sister are going to go home and macrame a plant holder”--or something hippie crafty like that. But as children with undeveloped brains, you really don’t know right from wrong. It was probably hard to say what was strange and what was normal as we had little to reference and meager years of life experience. With this being said, I guess I am giving me and my sister a pass, plus I don’t want to spend money working through it with a therapist.
So yeah, my sister and I stayed. And the boys told us to stand up against this white house wall. And yup, you’re right again, the boys began throwing rocks at us while we desperately tried to dodge the incoming pelting objects. Back and forth my sister and I ran, jumping and ducking and panicking, all the while trying not to crash into each other. A fun game? Definitely not. Was this a school-approved playground activity that perhaps we didn’t know about? No again. And most definitely my sister and I got beamed with numerous rocks as I am sure at least one of them was on the local little league baseball team.
Why didn’t we tell the boys to stop the torture and why didn’t we just hightail it out of there? Well, it’s easy. We were terrified. We were outright scared of these bullies and didn’t want to piss them off and so much tthey would do worse things to us. I think that when you’re young and don’t know any better you just push aside questioning and common sense and just ride the fear, hoping it ends soon.
Am I presently afraid of rocks or have some sort of PTSD with rocks? Luckily not in the slightest. Unless, of course, someone chucks one my way then I totally flinch. But in all honesty, I love rocks, I collect rocks and scour beaches for perfectly round ones, or striped ones, or holey rocks. My favorites are geodes with sparkly insides, and rocks with fossils embedded in them, and wishing rocks with a singular, unbroken white line running around the entire circumference.
According to legend, if you hold a wishing rock while making a wish then your wish will come true. To do this, trace your finger around the line while your eyes are closed, then you throw the rock back into the ocean (and, uh, definitely not at people) or gift it to someone else to pass on the magic.
