The Over-On-the-Shoulder Boulder Story

Because this particular story has a moral to it, it is worth telling even though it leaves me looking a little...inept.

The year was 2000-ish. We had a big maroon car-boat that was constantly giving us trouble (the worst of its faults was when it would turn its own lights off as we were driving down the highway at night).

I was driving the car-boat to a reservoir to meet up with my husband and my friend's husband who were fishing. As I drove along, I saw a rock in the middle of my lane. It looked small enough to straddle, so I headed straight for it. However, the closer I got to it, I realized it was bigger than I first thought. A little too late, I decided to dodge it. In my near-success, I hit the rock with the right front tire, which pummeled the rock into the side of the car and knocked the strip of paneling off (it was one of those skinny plastic strips, not the wide piece of pretend wood paneling you may be picturing).

Anyway, I pulled over, retrieved my piece of whatever-you-call-it (tossing it into the trunk that was big enough to haul eight bodies at once), and resumed my trek to the fishing spot. My friend, who witnessed all of this from the passenger seat, found the whole thing to be hilarious.

When I bashfully went to confess to my husband, I began, "Um. There was this rock in the road and..."

Without a pause he answered, "I know the rock you are talking about."

As it turns out, as he approached the same rock earlier that day (when he tells this story, he calls it a boulder, but I assure you, it was NOT a boulder...just a big rock), his friend said, "Should we stop and move it?"

His answer was, "Anybody dumb enough to hit it deserves to."

Maybe I could stop there and let you decide upon your own moral, because I'm having a hard time picking one:

"Always be a pioneer because the one who comes along behind you might be your other half."

Or "Keep the pathway clear because the dummy who follows might be the woman who uses your checkbook."

Or I could quote the Bible and say, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these..., ye have done it unto me." Except I would replace "me" with "yourself."

Or something completely different like: "Objects in the road are bigger than they appear."

We could take votes.

Because of this experience, when I see a rock in the road, I pull over and move it.

I think the moral to this story is really the golden rule, don't you?