Magnets of Doom

About a year ago, we took a nice long vacation that included stops in California, Arizona and Mexico. While in Quartzite, Arizona -- a town that exists, seemingly, to serve as a place to pump gas, park RVs and set up tents in which to sell trinkets the RV owners can take home to their grandchildren, we got, for our kids, a small handful of magnetic rocks. As kids will, the rocks soon lost their appeal. But you can't just throw out rocks. It isn't done. It isn't proper. So we still have them. And because I have a small collection of rocks that resemble pig noses, I've been designated as the keeper of the rocks.

This is bad. My rock collection happens to be in the study. Near my computer. A thing that really, really doesn't like magnetic fields. So I'm constantly moving the rocks so they're far, far away from my stuff. But because my wife, bless her, is a tidy soul, the rocks always find their way back to my desk. That, or the kids, with their unerring sense of knowing how to place parents' possessions in danger, keep bringing them back, firm in the belief that they, along with the pumice stones and hunks of concrete they keep bringing me, will add to the overall beauty and variety of my rock collection.

I may have to throw these rocks away. Maybe I'll start by sticking them to neighbors' cars . . .