Stoned

I used to think you could tell a lot about a person not by their medicine cabinet but their microwave. If it was wiped down and free of encrusted food, that person was likely to have an ordered, disciplined life. Not only that, but I judged them to be conscientious, even trustworthy.

You have to be careful, though. Some people don’t know when to quit and obsess over crumbs, spills, and anything on the inner roof of the microwave. If they bend over with a flashlight to check it, they probably have more important things to focus on than dried rice. Sure, cleanliness may be next to godliness, but obsession is the devil’s playground. Something like that. I also think Diogenes might have had an opinion about that.

Enter stones, which form the elements of my own act of ritual purification. And by stones, I mean the ones you put in a rock garden or pathway either for aesthetic appeal or functionality. Think drainage or soil support. My reason for putting in stones at my house was both aesthetic and practical.

It was aesthetic, since I thought stones would look better than the weeds and crabgrass that originally grew on my lawn and–even though mowed–looked ragged. Realtors call this “curb appeal.” In my case, it was literally at the curb, since the stones fill two rectangular spaces not four feet from the street. It was also practical, because you don’t water stones. They’re very low maintenance. That I hose them down anyway reflects my quirkiness–that and the fact that they’re more colorful when wet. I’m concerned about wet curb appeal, especially with summer coming up.

Call me obsessed, but maybe I am just attentive. That’s because I did the landscaping job myself, replacing a 125-square-foot lawn with more than a cubic ton of stones. I removed the grass and dirt, hauling 2–3 inches of topsoil to the backyard to level an unpaved space there. Then I laid down fabric to prevent weeds from popping up before filling the lawn with the stones delivered to my driveway by a local landscaper.

I wasn’t in a rush, but it still took weeks. The hardest part was removing the dirt. I didn’t want to buy a wheelbarrow, so I used a recycling bin to cart the dirt to the backyard. Thankfully, I already had a shovel. I couldn’t believe how much dirt there was for a relatively small area. For days, the front looked like an excavation site. Curb appeal: zero.

Now, however, it looks aesthetically pleasing, with a mixture of multi-colored stones of various shapes that are too big to drag into the house. I also included larger rocks left over from a previous landscaping job. I am happy with the result after all that hard work and enjoy the view from my living room window.

Here’s the thing–I have discovered a new way to judge people. This method is potentially better than the microwave, since it is simple and involves people’s behavior when they think no one is watching. It comes down to this: Do they or do they not walk on the stones? In effect, are they trespassers? At first, this involved deliveries from Amazon, UPS, Whole Foods, etc.

Generally, delivery people are pretty good about not walking over the stones. The mailman, not so much. He likes to walk over the stones, creating a cacophony of stomping and munching, in an effort to save himself the effort of walking around. I don’t know how many ergs he saves, but it’s annoying, especially when he does it every day at the same time: 12:11 pm. Don’t ask me about those eleven seconds or why I time him, but there it is.

As an aside, you might want to take what I have to say with a chunk of rock salt–if you haven’t already–since I declared a few weeks ago that my main objection to basketball is all that squeaking. You should see me at boxing practice when we have to share the gym with club basketball teams. It’s not as horrific as listening to the mailman, but it’s unnerving.

There has been one bright spot recently. A little girl in a floppy hat stumbled over the stones, marveling at them. She must have thought she was in some kind of wonderland. She stooped over to pick up one of the larger rocks but couldn’t manage it. From the sidewalk, her mother told her to put it down. The girl obeyed and then found a smaller, colorful stone, taking it with her. Her joy was obvious.

My joy was obvious, too. I hope she has many happy moments with the stone. I know she’ll take care of it, maybe even polish it and talk to it. And when she grows up, I’m sure she’ll have the cleanest microwave around.

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Image credits: Drazen Nesic, Andrej Lišakov, Photoholgic, Yana Druzhinina, Fabrizio Conti. Want more? Click on Amazon above, right for other publications, or go to Robert Brancatelli. Visit other blog readers under “Who You Are.” Leave a comment by clicking on the Comment tab above.