Malcolm was a young man when he began putting rocks in his pockets.
It all started one day when his boss got angry at him for something that wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t yell back at his boss, because he might get fired. The only thing he could do was be angry inside. He picked up a rock on the way home from work that day and put it in his pocket as a reminder of how angry he was. The next day, a taxi-driver drove by and left Malcolm standing in the rain. He stooped down and picked up another rock from the gutter. And thus the rock-collecting began. Whenever anyone did something to anger him – intentional or not – he picked up a rock and put it in his pocket so he would not forget. Years went by and rocks spilled out of his pockets and filled his house to overflowing. And Malcolm himself had become like those rocks – cold, gray, and lonely.
One day, a professor of geology brought some students to see the now famous rock collection. As the professor looked at all the ordinary rocks, he was confused and asked Malcolm why he had collected these particular rocks. Malcolm struggled to explain that each rock represented the anger he felt over a specific wrong-doing, although he had a hard time remembering the story for each rock. There were so many of them! The professor asked Malcolm if he had another collection – one to remind him of the nice things people had done for him. Malcolm was caught off-guard and spent a great deal of time thinking after the professor and his students left.
Soon, every one of those rocks was hauled off in a trailer. And Malcolm himself looked different. Happier. And his neighbors point now with pride to his attractive yard, with trees and flowers and bushes planted everywhere. They don’t have any explanation for his sudden interest in gardening. But one neighbor did notice that after she had taken a piece of cake to him,
Malcolm went out to the flower bed and planted a single seed. - Excerpts from “Pockets Full of Rocks” by Larry A. Hiller, New Era, Jan 1996
