Abby and I Dug Up a Rock

There was a smooth bump of rock the color of a raincloud peeking up from a patch of dirt next to the basketball court at South Salem Elementry School. It was about a foot long and oblong in shape with a width of around five inches. I had no clue how far down it was buried but I intended to find out. Over the course of several recesses, my best friend Abby and I dug it up.

It wasn’t an easy task because we chose to begin excavation in the middle of January, when the ground was hard and cold beneath the thin layer of sand-infused Long Island dirt that surrounded our rock. We scraped out the chilly muck with woodchips, stubby sticks, our fingers, and occasionally used plastic utensils snatched from the lunch line.

After our recess time, the third and fourth graders came out to play, carelessly trampling our excavation site, repacking the dirt with the soles of their sneakers. Abby and I worked with diligence, embedding filth beneath our fingernails, pressing soil into the fabric of our gloves. We did not attend to our rock when it rained or snowed due to the mandates of indoor recess, but otherwise we spent a lot of time bent over that half-buried rock, studiously scraping the earth away from its stony sides and enjoying one another’s company. Joyous was the day Abby found she could wiggle the rock a little bit, as was the first time day we realized we could lift part of it out. Miraculous was the day when I could grasp its stony edges and shove it out from its dirty prison, see it tumble out onto the yellowish grass, its muddy underside exposed to the wintertime sun.

Snatching up our trophy and passing it back and forth, Abby and I were quite impressed with ourselves. We felt our efforts to uncover this schoolyard treasure should not go unnoticed. Holding our fabulous discovery like a plate of Christmas appetizers, I stood up and turned towards the Recess Monitors, a duo of women who stood beneath a pair of trees by the newly built playground, their hands shoved into their pockets, walkie talkies clipped to the collars of their jackets. The second they saw our rock, their heads were shaking, their fingers were pointing, and their mouths were opening.

“Put down that rock!” They said. “It’s not safe! Just put it down.”

“But we dug it up! It’s science!” We protested, and then immediately put it down.

Science was a powerful notion to us first graders. Little by slow it was explaining the wonders of the world, either heightening or debunking our theories on magic. Electricity, mirror reflections, life cycles, ecosystems- to us it was a type of Narnia, one we could explore at our leisure by lacing up a pair of sneakers and heading outdoors. As a Regents Chemistry student I now realize the subject is far more complicated than unearthing a scrap of substance from the playground, but in first grade this was the discovery of the year.

‘Just put the rock down,’ we were told, and we did, because we thought it belonged to us and knew it would soon be confiscated if we pushed back against our superiors. Abby rolled it over a few times with her foot. I called over a gaggle of friends to ogle at the culmination of our toils. The following recesses we did something else, abandoning science for the safety of imagination, which could be removed from our possession just as easily, but was easier to attain than anything sticking out of the soil.

For a long time I vowed never to be the sort of person who took rocks away from kids, but since becoming a camp counselor I can now see the wisdom of separating child from mineral. It follows the If You Give A Mouse A Cookie principle. If you let a kid keep playing with a rock, they’ll want to bring it indoors. If they bring it indoors, they will abandon science in order to name and personify the rock. If they are allowed to make the rock the equivalent of a human being, when another kid comes along to touch or play with the seemingly ordinary rock, a battle will be waged over which child is truly worthy of the rock’s companionship. If you let two kids fight over a rock, it can easily lead to fighting with a rock, and then you have to explain to first responders why you let that kid keep playing with a rock. This scenario includes a lot of assumption, and I can’t envision Abby and I becoming overprotective co-parents to a rock, but the fear of injury was very real. If Abby and I had been given the green light on engaging with our rock, we might’ve hurt ourselves by tossing and kicking it. We could’ve dropped it on somebody’s foot while showing it off. We could’ve rolled it into the parking lot where it would scrape the underbelly of a teacher’s car. We could’ve thrown it over the chain link fence into the playground and hit a recess monitor.

The Recess Monitors were right to be cautionary, but Abby and I were right to be frustrated. That was our rock! How could those ladies watch us scrape away at it, recess after recess, and give us no praise for such an accomplishment? As a counselor I try to be quick with praise, even when attempting discipline. How hard would it have been to say, “That’s a gorgeous rock, but you’ve got to put it down before you hurt yourself or someone else”? Then again, not every endeavor is worthy of applause, and what kind of school would Salem have been if kids were celebrated in every circumstance? How would we pinpoint our strengths and weaknesses, how would we learn what was worthy of our attentions if discouragement was never applied?

Though it has taken me a decade to understand, I now realize that digging up rocks was an isolating endeavor. It was something Abby and I did by ourselves, mostly in silence. It strengthened our friendship- until middle school, at least- and proved we could focus on completing a task, but at the same time we were stifling our interaction with other kids. The following year my second-grade teacher would look at my poor math assessment scores and my talkative nature, then confront my mother with the possibility that I had ADD. My mother offered the rock digging and my ability to sit with a book for hours as proof this was not the case- I could concentrate on anything I deemed worthy of my attention, and it was difficult to persuade me to engage in things that didn’t hold my interest.

It was a fabulous time, digging up a rock with Abby in first grade. I’m glad I did it, I’m glad I learned from it, and I’m glad I received no praise from it, because through the experience, I practiced praising myself. I lifted that rock from the plot beside the basketball court with great satisfaction. I had decided upon a goal, teamed up with my friend, and we had not stopped working until we had that goal in our grasp. Interest + teamwork + sustained effort = achievement and self-appreciation. That’s an equation I understand, and thanks to Abby’s help, I can now apply it to anything.