For Renzy

It’s been a long time since any of us Dark Humor guys have actually posted a blog to the site here but recently I had a really good friend get into a car accident and I thought that perhaps this may be a way to brighten his day and get him on the road to recovery, after all, laughter is the best medicine right?

A while back I blogged about the significance of rocks as a metaphor and actual rocks…tied to ponies. I think if Kurt, my friend, is reading this he probably already knows where it’s headed…

My family has owned and operated a tubing and camping place in Northwest Minnesota for over 27 years now, and in that time we have had a lot of wonderful people come and work for us, or I should say with us. In the long-run the fact that these people have been right beside us in the trenches, in good times and bad, have made them more than employees or friends, any one of us would certainly consider them to be part of our family. I could go on and on about each and every one of the people that have worked for us over the years, but this blog isn’t for them today. I’m writing today for someone who has been like a brother to me, who inspired me to go to college with the intentions of some day becoming a writer…which apparently hasn’t panned out so well…

Our operation for the tubing has changed quite a bit over the years and at one point we actually would have a few people waiting for everyone to get off at our landing, where we would cut the tubes apart and then haul them back to our launching facility. As kids this was always the best job to have because we were far away from supervision and generally spent the majority of our time swimming and messing around.

One particular day we were hanging out at the landing with my brother and our friend Kurt when for some odd reason we decided it would be a good idea to have a bit of a rock fight…we were kids, and even worse, boys. What started out as pebbles quickly escalated to larger and larger actual rocks until eventually Kurt was hurling boulders at me until he finally got what he wanted and took me out at the legs. As I was lying on the ground, in and out of consciousness, some nice lady came to my defense and was able to stop Kurt from inflicting any more torture to me, thank god!

Now that’s my side of the story and Kurt may claim it went a little different but one thing is for certain, this little story about actual rocks has become almost a metaphor to us. The truth of the story is that Kurt may have simply rolled a rock at me and I went down like a ton of bricks because I am a bit of a weakling, but to this day we each maintain our own versions of the story and I don’t think we will ever forget, or maybe truly remember, that day.

Even though we don’t see each other very often anymore Kurt will always be a part of my life. It may be a coincidence that we share this story about actual rocks when so much of our lives can be tied to the metaphor of rocks as well. I don’t tell him enough how much of an impact he truly has had on my life and I just wanted to take this opportunity to let him know. I may never be a true writer, my 3 readers would agree, but the fact that I love doing it can certainly be attributed to Kurt…who in case you are wondering still has a Werewolf novel stashed somewhere on his shelf, just waiting for me to finish my film degree to make! (In case you were wondering, I actually switched majors about seven different times and finally ended up with a business degree…what a cop out huh?!)