I have a small rock collection, said rocks being semi-precious cut and uncut gemstones.
I call it my desk jewelry, and a new guy was looking at the collection with some disdain, and as a lark picked a rock out of his shoe and and added it with a flourish.

Weeks later, and he continued to annoy me and play with the rocks. One day, he knocked over the lot, and everything went flying to the far corners of my office. He went ashen and scrambled to pick up as many as he could, asking me if I was missing any, and panicking when I said yes, one.

Which one, what did it look like? How big was it? I told him it was a basaltic stone, yea big, dark in colour. Was it rare? valuable? I said it was given to me specially, and the only one of its kind in my collection. He searched frantically until I told him to go look in the car park for another, as the missing one was the rock he'd picked out of his shoe.
( kila is reading clocks upside-down as usual, Wed 9 May 2012, 13:24, Reply)