Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Ordinary Adventures Blog

  • entries
    61
  • comments
    84
  • views
    15,008

2 Degrees of Separation


simplybill

983 views

During my college years, I became good friends with an older woman who was the assistant manager of a restaurant where I worked. She was one of those free spirits who make a point of hanging around with younger people; she used to say, "It keeps me young!"  After she moved into an assisted-living facility in Tucson, Arizona, I continued visiting her when my job took me there. We were friends for nearly 40 years.

Irene never stopped being a social butterfly. She made a point of really getting to know people, almost to the point of being nosy; but who doesn't like to talk about themselves? She knew every resident in the facility and all of the employees. Her curiosity about people even extended outside of the facility: the employees would sometimes bring in their children so Irene could meet them. One day she pointed to a man sitting on the other side of the courtyard and quietly told me that he was the chemist who invented the colorful bowling balls that replaced the black bowling balls that were used years ago. It was an interesting nugget of history.

Irene introduced me to a resident who, in his younger days, searched for Indian arrowheads in the dry washes of northern Utah. As elderly people often do, he was giving away some of his prized possessions to people that he thought would value them. I was given a set of small arrowheads that were used for hunting birds. The arrowheads and a small scraping tool were carefully displayed on a piece of foam in a container with a see-through lid.

After our visit I returned to the hotel, which was near a Trader Joe's store. I stopped to pick up some frozen oatmeal for breakfast the next morning. I borrowed a salad bowl from the hotel bar, put the oatmeal in the small refrigerator in my room, and went to bed.

The next morning when I opened the box, I discovered that the oatmeal was in a hard plastic container that was impossible to open with my bare hands. 
 'Disappointed' doesn't describe how I felt. I had really been looking forward to eating that oatmeal! Then I remembered the sharp-edged scraping tool in the arrowhead collection. I removed the scraper, sliced open the hard plastic container, and microwaved my oatmeal. As I sat there eating, I began picturing a Ute Indian man chipping away at a piece of rock, shaping it into a tool, and then using the handmade tool to scrape a deer hide that would be made into a robe or a decorated shirt. I felt a connection to the native tribes who hunted the mountains of Utah hundreds of years ago. I'm still in awe when I think about it today: one of those tribesmen helped me cook breakfast. 

1 Comment


Recommended Comments

In this day and age when we have living spaces full of useless crap it is sweet irony what a little rock can do!

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now