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I have never had any qualms about talking to crazy people. I have beautiful childhood memories of visiting my relatives at the Danvers State Mental Institution. Crazy people are a hidden joy in our hurry-up society. So the other night as I stopped for gas after work I was once again blessed to talk to a crazy person. At first our encounter was the usual plea for money. I gave him $5, wished him luck and went in to pay for my gas. But as I walked out he engaged me in conversation. It was than that I realized that I wasn't dealing with merely a homeless person but rather my beloved crazy person. He wasn't a rambler. He had a desire to share with me his prized possessions. In each hand he had a rock. Common rocks to my eye but to him they where of inestimable value. In his right hand he held a smooth round rock, dark gray, granite. In his left a rather shabby elongated rock that appeared to be broken from a larger boulder. He showed me the quartz vein running through the contrasting gray of the first rock. I told him it was a rock that had spent some time in the ocean because of it's roundness. The quartz vein was sandwiched in at some distant past event when the ocean pressed it's weight upon two unlike crystalline materials. He was pleased and excited to hear this. I suppose this endeared me to him in such a profound way that he made me privy to the second rock. A rock he told me he found in a river bed the day his daughter was born. Generally I don't correct crazy people but this time I did. That couldn't have come from a river bed I told him. It is too craggy and the motion of the water would have smoothed it. No response. I pumped my gas and returned for my change. Enough time for him to have given thought to my observation. You're right, he told me. Now I was in his eyes an expert on rocks. Which encouraged him to reveal even more secrets. He had seen a meteor, he told me, that did a loop in the sky. Of course I informed him that such an event was quite common. I asked him to keep an eye out for other night events. As I was pulling out I saw him tenderly holding the daughter rock to his face and gently cooing, as to comfort it. The next day I told my brother. His friend Peter Cool (real name) exclaimed, You meet the rock guy?!! You know him I asked. Yes, Peter had met him several months before at a doughnut shop. Peter also gave him some money and he also asked if he could sit with Peter. He had a rock in each hand, smaller than the ones I had seen. He played with them as he had his coffee. Oh sure, me and you can love rocks too. Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and other gems. We can pay dearly for them. We can admire their beauty and think about them as a gift from the earth. But can we say that we love better than the Rock Guy? Maybe he is crazy, or maybe we are. But the vision of him cradling his rock, like a baby, like the Hope Diamond was more beautiful a sight than any excited girl in a jewelry store getting just another piece of bling.
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