Key Issues

Magic Balls

Key's internet access is down, and I hate to see a blogsite collect cobwebs, so I thought I would freshify things until her return. And out of respect I will put up a rarity for me, a post that does not involve forest defecation. Lookit:

When I was six or seven I went on a camping trip with a boy's club group of some affiliation or other. I forget, who, exactly, but my Sunday School teacher was a chaperone, and he was a kindly sort, so I went along. The campsite was great. It was somewhere between Blitchton, Georgia and Stilson, Georgia. A bend in a creek canopied with old growth forest, boughs of great girth sweeping majestically over the water. There was river, slow, somnolent. There was no sunlight, other than sporadic rays filtered through the leaves. It was a magnificent environment for young boys to whoop it up.

After venturing down the dirt road we found some open space. Dirt flats between the sand hills (this was, and is, sand hill country). Here we played Capture the Flag for several hours, and returned to the campsite, exhausted, sweaty, and sandfly-bitten for weiners over the campfire, and some highly effective ghost stories. Bliss.

The next day we cane-pole fished for bream and perch. The catch was plentiful, but none were keepers. No problem. We had weiners. In the afternoon a friend and I set forth in exploration, to divine the secrets of this primordial realm. We were perhaps a mile deep into the woods, following the creek, when I came upon a remarkable sight: a strangely configured pile of odd, luminescent balls, arranged in an indecipherable pattern.

"What do you think they are?" I asked. "I dunno," he said. "But they're real strange."

I thought these might be eggs of some sort, and could spawn duck-billed platypuses, or walking catfish, or something even more exotic (dinosaurs, perhaps). They seemed alive. I scooped up a handful, and carefully cradled them in my hands. "We have to go tell Mr. Kaufman!" I said. "He'll know what they are!"

We hied it back down the river path, ass over elbows, the long mile back to camp. When we arrived, breathless, I proffered my prize to Mr. Kaufman. "Look what I found!" I said. "What do you think they are?" Mr. Kaufman adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, peered at the rather slimy specimens in my hand, and quietly said "Deer poop. Son, you have deer poop in your hands."

So, okay, I lied in that second sentence. But in my defense I will state that I, frankly, don't seem to have much else to talk about.