One year, we took a trip out to Iowa to visit my wife Sandy’s sister. After a nice relaxing swim in the pool, I went back to the room to shower. To my surprise, I was barely able to work up a lather with the soap, and my body felt really sticky. Thinking it was just cheap, hotel soap, I grabbed the nice, expensive shampoo that Sandy won’t travel without, and started washing both of my hair . . .  yeah, I’m a bit thin up top. Again, I was barely able to soap my head (‘soap’, not ‘soak’).

After drying off, I relayed this phenomenon to Sandy, who wisely nodded her head, and with professor-type decorum (since she has devoted much time to everything related to hair-washing) informed me that the hotel has ‘hard’ water, whereas, we have ‘soft’ water at home.

As a retired lifeguard (meaning Speedos no longer look good on me), I couldn’t remember ever hearing about any difference in water’s ‘hardness’, and definitely don’t remember any soft-landing belly-flops. So, I asked her what made our water at home softer. She replied saying that our water softener softens our water by adding salt.

Huh?

I thought to myself, "Self, how can this be?" Salt, I reflected, is a crystal, which I’m pretty sure is in the rock family. So I was being asked to believe that you add rocks to make water softer!

Uh, huh. And you gain weight if you want to fly, right?

I saw a documentary once that showed rock being blasted out of quarries, and taken by truck to processing plants that munched the rocks into a pasty-like substance that they spread out onto long roles of paper. Then they rolled more paper on top of the sludge, and cooked everything in a big oven. Cutting it up into sheets, they shipped the completed drywall to job sites to be nailed to studs (those good-looking, manly, macho 2X4’s holding up your walls).

Where am I going with all this?

Um, oh, yeah.

Be patient. We’re almost there.

The point is that since drywall is made from rock, you can’t escape the fact that, after all these years, we still live in caves!

And I’m not done yet!

You can even take this thought a little further. Because, if you think about it, we even drive rocks!

Take your basic car. It’s manufactured out of steel, which comes from iron ore, which is a rock! Even tires come from rubber, a plant that grows in rock.

So, what’s that make us?

Let’s review. We live in caves. We drive around in mobile rocks. We sometimes wear animal skins.

Somehow Fred Flintstone doesn’t seem so primitive anymore.

(Oh, by the way, I’m going to make my snowballs this winter out of soft water, so I don’t hurt anyone.).