Mystery #128 – Pick your own rock!

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #128 – Pick your own rock!

I don't know what it is about the Southwest, but a lot of souvenir shops down here have some strange stuff. Nothing, though, beats the "pick your own rock" experience for weirdness. For those of you from more, um, sane parts of the country, let's draw us a mental picture. Usually the stereotypical P.Y.O.R. setup consists of a cart designed to look like a tiny little prospector's wagon (either a tiny wagon for a prospector or a wagon for a tiny prospector, however you'd like to interpret that phrase) with a basket full of colorful rocks. To the side are several bags and usually some sort of key for identifying the assorted stones in the basket. Now, random bored tourist A is supposed to take a pouch and put a certain number of rocks in it to be paid for by parent B so they can be lost at the bottom of junk drawer C as soon as the family gets home.

I was always the kid who just didn't get it. My only thought was how disgusting those rocks must be. That's a lot of snotty kid exposure for my taste. "Forget that," I'd think, "I'll go with a t-shirt." Sometimes it's worth it to pick your own rock though, like in Harry Potter. If, on my family's road trip to New Mexico, they had been selling Sorcerer's Stones in the Albuquerque gift shop, it probably would have been a more interesting trip. Also, I could have made the Elixir of Life, which probably tastes really good. Like root beer. Root beer and magic.