Skipping Stones

In the opening scene of the Andy Griffith Show there is a scene where the young Opie is walking with Andy and can’t resist picking up a stone and throwing it into the river. Now the story goes that since the river was actually a reservoir, the producers were only allowed three stones to be thrown. So the young Ron Howard had to practice off set before the actual stones were thrown.

Now I know this is a fictional scene in a great TV show. But in my youth I threw a lot of stones into creeks, ponds, lakes, and rivers. While it was fun to just throw, there was a form of art we always worked on and that was skipping the stones across the water.

One of the great past times as a kid was to fish, and while we imagined ourselves to be great fishermen it really was more about having fun than catching the big one. Maybe that is why as adults we always like telling stories about the one that got away.

More times than not what started out to be that great fishing expedition turned out to be “let’s see who can get a rock to skip the most and farthest.” If you have never skipped a rock across the water you have truly missed one of the great feats to have ever been perfected by man. (Probably a little dramatic but you get the point.)

Not just any rock would do, you had to find that perfect flat rock, the one that was just the right size to fit perfectly between your thumb and index finger. Then with that practiced throw, sling it across the pond and watch it go.

Now three skips was good, but if you could get five or six you were really a champion. Then afterwards just watching the ripples where your rock had skipped made it all worthwhile. Because at each spot in the water where the rock touched the ripples created seemed to go on forever.

Makes you stop and think about how much of a ripple effect we create in the lives we touch every day. Are we really trying to see how many lives we can have a positive effect on, or are we just throwing rocks to watch them sink? And will the ripples we create in life go on forever or just make a big splash?