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Old Clams and Rocks
By Brian | October 30, 2007 | Share on Facebook
Here’s something you don’t see every day – an InstaPun:
A 410-year-old clam. “The clam, nicknamed Ming after the Chinese dynasty in power when it was born, was in its infancy when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing plays such as Othello and Hamlet.” And for all those years, it was happy as a . . . well, you know.
Nice one, Glenn. I’m groaning with you, not at you, I swear…
But it does remind me of a story from my past.
My wife and I went to Israel in 1997 and toured around the country on one of those package deals. One of the first stops was Masada, the famous mountain in southern Israel where ancient Jews held off the Roman army for quite some time, until they eventually committed mass suicide rather than be captured.
When you’re on Masada, your tour guide tells you that it’s considered bad luck to remove rocks, stones, pebbles, etc. from the mountain. So, of course, everyone grabs a rock and puts it in their pocket. Here’s the one I grabbed:
When I got it back to my hotel room, I washed it off, so I could put it in my suitcase without covering everything in dirt and mud. On doing so, I noticed the Hebrew letter (either a Vet or a Kaf – it’s hard to tell) that had been written on it, likely thousands of years ago when the Jews were there fighting the Romans. I’ve kept it to this day, as an interesting historical artifact and a nice reminder of a wonderful trip.
But, as with Ming the Clam, I distinctly remember the following thoughts going through my head:
1) “Wow…a Hebrew letter! This rock was around in the time of the Romans. It must be thousands of years old!”
2) “Come to think of it…*ALL* rocks are thousands of years old. After all, it’s not like they’re making new ones…”
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