People are really weird about crystals. There’s the crystal cult goofs who I guess think they channel divine essence or something. And was it crystals that gave Merlin his magic? I dunno. I’m not terribly inclined to research it further.
But anyway, I was at some outlet with Liz and noticed a bin of geodes. I recalled geode-hunting once in New Mexico, an old memory from my Texas years, and while I found some fragments, no one in the group discovered an intact geode. And here was a pile of them as if they had been simply scooped up somewhere. Maybe they had. I didn’t know how common they were.
Wikipedia revealed the obvious answer: they are (the biggest one being a cave in Ohio) and no doubt $10 was a large up-charge for the small rock. Still it was cool and dredged up a childhood memory, so I bought it for the kid.
The cashier helpfully informed me that I should break it open gently, rather than wail upon it with a hammer, as they break easy and hitting it too hard would just crush it. Apparently that was a common complaint.
I had planned to saw it evenly in half, though it turned out that I lacked the equipment to do so. So I got a chisel and hammer. I held the chisel while the kid tapped the hammer, and the geode fell apart into 3 nice chunks.
It was a cool enough experience that even the kid exclaimed in delight, distracting her away from her tablet for minutes.
Then she put it back together.
Weird. OCD or something. I dunno where she gets that from.
–Simon