“Merrill Meewee knew his stones. As a boy in Kenya, skipping stones was his favorite free-time activity. There had been an abundance of saucer-shaped missiles on the banks of his father’s own fishpond. Fat, river-smoothed disks, they skipped ten, twelve, sixteen times before slipping beneath the surface with a watery plop. His father, a man of little wealth but great forbearance, was not pleased with his boy’s solitary pastime, but he never ordered him to stop. Instead, he asked the boy how many stones he thought the pond could hold. I don’t know, Meewee remembered answering. A hundred thousand?
Oh, such a big number! And how many stones do you suppose you’ve thrown already?
Merrill, who was an excellent student, calculated the number of stones he might have tossed in an hour and how many free hours were left each day after school and chores, how many afternoons in how many years since he first discovered the sport. I would estimate 14,850, he informed his father with a certain amount of swagger.
His father was impressed. So many? And all of them have gone to the bottom?
Of course they’ve gone to the bottom, he had said, embarrassed by his father’s apparent ignorance. They’re stones. They’re heavier than water.
And heavier than fishes?
Of course heavier than fishes.
Good, good, his father concluded, patting him on the head. Keep at it, son, and soon I won’t have to work so hard.
Father?
It’s true. When you fill up my pond with your stones, I won’t need nets and plungers to harvest the fish. I’ll simply wade up to my ankles and pick them like squash.
It was a lesson in diplomacy, as much as aquaculture, and it stayed with him all these years.”
―
David Marusek,
Mind Over Ship
