It looked totally awesome in the box. A marvellous
contraption for polishing rocks, teaching kids not only about natural processes
and turning dull rough rocks into beautifully polished gems, but then they
could also turn the gems into their very own handmade jewellery. What could be
bad about that?
Ah, how about everything…
When the box was unpacked my ten year old daughter eyed it
suspiciously, glancing over at the outrageous monster dolls with terrifyingly
high shoes and eye-popping outfits that her younger sisters had received for
their birthdays. Instead, as the eldest child, she was unwrapping a pile of
grown-up gifts, books, craft – things that educated and probably made her
smarter, but probably rated high on the disappointing-gift register.
But this was a rock polisher. Looking like something out of
a Pokemon cartoon, it contained an electronic tumbler, an assorted of rough
looking stones, and four bags of grit.
What fun, I thought, as she pulled everything out of the box
and began glancing through the instruction book.
A few minutes later, she wandered past, having poured the
rocks into the tumbler and added the first, most coarse level of polishing
sand. How educational, I thought.
The she turned it on and the entire house was instantly
filled with a grinding, rattling sound as rocks bounced off plastic and a cheap
motor guzzled up electricity. My smile wavered a bit.
‘So, ah, this first stage will take four to six days,’ she
said tossing the instruction booklet in front of me and picking up a book.
Wait, what?
Four to six DAYS?
My husband shot me a dirty look and went to hide upstairs.
‘Yeah,’ she said mildly, ‘the whole thing should only take
about four weeks.’
Four WEEKS?
With a nervous twitch I picked up the instruction book and
began to desperately search for proof she was wantonly mistaken.
My daughter noticed my panic and pointed out that if left up
to nature, polishing rocks would normally takes years, so really, this was very
quick. I wanted to point out we could probably BUY lovely polished gems from
the local market for a couple of dollars and save ourselves a lot of headaches.
I did some calculations in my head. Four WEEKS. That was
definitely long enough to initiate divorce proceedings, I was sure, especially given
the angry stomping coming from upstairs, where the vibrations from the rock
tumbler were coming through the ceilings.
Ignoring the nasty looks and thinly veiled comments from my
husband over the next few days, we established a buffering system which
included boxes, cork mats, piles of tea-towels and shutting doors all in a
desperate attempt to block the relentless, agonising sound of that damn rock
tumbler.
After a couple of days my husband spat the dummy and turned
it off at the wall.
‘I have a headache,’ he moaned.
I’m the one who works from home, I thought. I have to listen
to it during the day as well as the night.
My daughter was beside herself. ‘I have to reset the timer
now, Dad. It goes back to the start of the four days.’
I shot my husband a dirty look. He rolled his eyes and left
for work.
We established that we could pause the timer overnight, a
compromise that meant that the house would be quiet(er) overnight, but it would
now take EIGHT days to complete the first step.
Suddenly, about a week later as I was working at my computer
at the kitchen table, the house suddenly went quiet. It took a moment for my
brain to adjust to the silence. The tumbler had stopped.
The first stage was
over.
That afternoon, my daughter unscrewed the chamber and poured
out the dirty, gritty water. A pile of rocks followed. She was excited about
the changes she could already see in the stones. I just saw a pile of dirty
rocks.
‘The next stage goes for seven days,’ she informed me
happily as she poured the Stage Two powder into the chamber and set the
timer. Immediately the house started vibrating again and I felt my head begin
to pound. ‘This is so awesome, I can’t wait to see them at the end,’ and she
skipped off to school.
We are currently at the end of Stage Two and still have two
packets of increasingly fine grit to go. As per our agreement the tumbler is
only ever on during the day after my husband leaves for work, so I am the only
one who gets to enjoy the brain-numbing repetitiveness of the worst present
ever, penance perhaps and well deserved, considering I bought the damn thing
for her…
 |
| NOT worth it! |
