The Autism Diaries?! (Part 9)

A new occasional series here at “Sounds Good”

When I was about nine I found the perfect skimming stone. It had a bit of weight to it but was perfectly flat and round and smooth — and it almost felt like it was not a real stone at all, had to have been ‘created’ (well, yes, they’re all created, as such — but this one felt like something from a factory, or an art project). I took the stone home with me. And to keep it safe I put it in my pencil case. I thought, briefly, about how it would be good to one day throw it, see if I could get 17 or 18 ‘skips’. I was always pretty decent at skimming stones. Pretty good side-arm. Anyway, I then decided that I would never throw this. I’d keep it. Monument to the idea of skimming stones without ever using it to skim. No skips from this stone. It would just live. It would sit. It would hold. It was a paperweight on my desk for a bit, but then it went back in the pencil case. And then one day I coloured the whole thing in with a sharpie. Black. I instantly felt a bit bad that I’d ruined its perfect grey. But I’d also done about the best job I could to paint it black. The stone lived in my pencil case right through school — and came to university with me. My brother gave me a piece of the Berlin Wall. Little gift shop rock. It’s on the bookshelf now. Still. I had my first piece of gift shop rock from down at ‘The Rocks’ in Sydney. I bought it when I was 13. Away from home on a school sports trip. I wandered around Sydney alone for several hours, got caught up buying Midnight Oil tapes, and lost in my own world there under headphones, I soon lost the rest of the gang, and ended up wandering about until I found The Rocks — which I remembered from when I was 11 on my first trip to Sydney. I have a single lawn bowl — a black ball that is heavy like a small rock and has a crack in the number — that I bought from an antique store at least 20 years ago. It sat on my desk for a while, and then on the windowsill. It’s currently on a small table. My favourite thing I ever had — I think I was five, maybe I was six — my folks went away for a weekend and they bought me back this stone. It was polished. And had a whole bunch of tiny stones in a row, faces painted on them. Then a little sign at the back made out of an ice-block stick. It says, “Rock Concert”. This sat on my desk at home for years, and I would sometimes take it to school. I had it forever, and now I’m sad just thinking about how I have no idea when or how or where I misplaced this. It should be sitting on the bookshelf, because in my mind that’s where it’s always been and where it belongs. Its stupid, one-note-joke feels like a revelation to me. No one ever really seemed to think it was funny but I got it when I was six. And held onto it (the joke, if not the rock) ever since. And, oh fuck, I collect rocks? I actually had no idea. I’m finding this out as I write. Fuck.