Rocks?

Sometimes, something comes along in life that I just can't figure out. Today, for example, I am totally baffled by the different attitudes people have towards activities which are often considered to be hobbies. I find it humorous that one person can find something exciting while others think it is uninteresting, or even ridiculous.

My dad had a hobby for several years that I never could relate to. He took my old bicycle, attached a laundry basket to the handle bars, and spent hours walking up and down the roads in our area collecting aluminum cans. Trust me, he didn't do it out of concern for the environment, and he sure as heck did not need the money. Just the same, collecting cans was a passion for him. He kept elaborate records of the cans he took into the recycling center. He listed their weight and the money he got for them. For him, it seemed to be a quest to be the world's most prolific aluminum can collector. Mom would simply smile and say, "It gets him out of the house."

My grandmother had a hobby. She collected sailors and fishermen. Not living ones. That was Aunt Stella, and I promised Mom I would never embarrass the family by talking about her in public. The ones Grandmom collected were little realistically hand-carved and painted men. She had lots of them. My favorite was one that actually smoked little tiny cigarettes. The office area of her motel, The Sea Lure, had a large picture window which was divided up like a bookshelf. It was full of her collection. The few that I have now are some of my most prized possessions. I understood Grandmom's hobby, even if I didn't grow up collecting wooden figurines.

A woman I new in another school district was obsessed with antiques. I say obsessed because her rather large old house was more like a museum than a home. In fact, they had to build a modern living room area in a separate building behind the main house. Everywhere you looked in every room antiques where displayed. Tables and dressers were buried under them. Shelves loaded with antique plates, cups, and dolls lined the walls. It was amazing, even though I found it a little kooky.

A friend of my wife collects clocks. She has all kinds of them all over her beautiful home out in the country. In order to enjoy the many lovely sounds they make, she has them set to go off at different times. As you eat dinner at her dining room table, clocks are constantly sounding off, one after the other. At first, I found it a bit annoying. Before long, however, I wasn't even aware of them.

My mother loved to collect cardinals. She had them everywhere in her house. They're still there. Dad says he is going to get rid of them, but when I visit, I can tell that he has lovingly dusted them. She loved them so much that I even tried to find a cardinal urn to hold her ashes. I never thought it was a silly hobby. In fact, whenever I saw something related to cardinals while traveling, I bought it for her. Her friends and other family members also gave her gifts of cardinals.

I guess I collect hobbies. I have sampled many of them over the years. Most don't stick with me for too long. I have been into fishing, knitting, cross stitch, painting, poetry, coin collecting, stamp collecting, Chinese brass collecting, genealogy, book collecting, cooking, ice cream making, yogurt making, pickling, geocaching, and photography among others too numerous to remember or mention. I really get into things for awhile, but eventually they seem to get dropped on the wayside. Even geocaching, a hobby shared with my younger son, seems to be fizzing out, like all my other hobbies. Every once in awhile, I will pull out the primary colored blanket I started knitting eighteen years ago while Rachel was pregnant with Josh and knit a few rows. I'll dust off my Chinese brass pieces and get a brief yearning to go on Ebay for more. I'll add a few family members to the genealogy record my mom left behind. Sometimes, I'll even convince Jared to brave the heat and find a geocache or two. But I really can't claim that any of my hobbies, past or present, are passions.

My buddies, Mike and Jack, are very passionate about rocks. I don't know how that happened. All of a sudden they thought rocks were awesome. The told me how they were going out rock hunting in West Texas during the last spring break. I remember feeling fortunate that I had to take Joshua to Austin and couldn't make that trip. Then last week, we took a crazy four day road trip out west under the guise of picking up Jack's son, Caleb. As part of that trip, we hooked up with a rock expert in Alpine. She took us out to the desert, and the guys spent several hours looking for rocks. I just couldn't get into it. I picked up a few rocks, but I didn't really look for them. Instead, I enjoyed a solitary walk in the desert looking at birds, cacti, and hoping to avoid the rattlesnakes we were warned about. The others found lots of rocks. At our hotel in Del Rio later that night, Mike spent over an hour washing his rocks in the sink. I have to admit that they looked kind of pretty all together like that. Nonetheless, they were just rocks. I like their beer brewing hobby a whole lot more!

Why do some people go crazy about some things while the rest of us think they are uninteresting or ridiculous? What drives some of us to collect things other people would just as soon not have? Why do we look at people with unusual hobbies and consider them weird? I certainly don't have answers to any of those questions. I guess I'll just have to go through life saying a polite, "That's nice", whenever someone mentions a hobby I can't appreciate. But come on guys. Really? ROCKS?