Zoe has returned to Seattle after a decade's absence, bringing with her her son, Aaron. I was hugely in Aaron's life when he was 7-10, and now he's 19. I hadn't seen him in 9 years until a party a couple weeks ago.
He reminded me of the Magic Rock.
One day when he was nine, Zoe and he arrived home to find the following: a broken window, three chips in the TV screen, and a rock sitting on the sill of the broken window. It defied explanation. It defied physics. Zoe was freaked out. I showed up, and I was stumped too. There was a gravel driveway 100' away, across the street, and we wondered if it was remotely possible that someone had violently spun their wheels over there and caused the rock to sail 100', crash through the window, hit the TV three times, and then bounce back in the direction from which it had come. Which of course it isn't. But off I went anyway in the Jeep, trying to test the hypothesis, furiously spinning my wheels in the gravel.
"That," Aaron concluded, "Was when I realized that not all adults have it together."