Gold Rush

Somewhere along life’s unpredictable path, the boy picked up on the concept of gold hunting. It showed yesterday when he demonstrated a fierce case of gold fever at his swim lessons. He started picking up every rock he could find that he thought might have gold in it. He’d bring it to me, I’d tell him “No, there’s no gold in it”, he’d drop it with a disappointed look so I’d describe what he should be looking for, then he’d come back 30 seconds later saying “Dad, this looks like gold…”

Initially, it was amusing. But after the 5th or 6th iteration (I lost count), it got irritating. The fact that I was in the middle of reading a book and he kept interrupting me right about the time I figured out where to pick up from the previous interruption didn’t help.

The most amusing moment? When he revealed one of his motivations for the gold hunting.

“Dad, how much is gold worth?”

“It depends on how much of it you have. It’s worth about $400 dollars and ounce. So, the more you have the more you can get.” I just checked and it seems I considerably low-balled the value- it’s more like $1600 an ounce. Oh well, his eyes still popped a bit when I told him the numbers.

“So I could buy, like, a DS and some games with it. Right?”

“Well, yes. If you had an ounce or more.”

“So if this were gold would it be enough?” He held up a pebble a little bigger than a dime in circumference.

I chuckled. “Well, that’s probably an ounce so if it were all gold then yes. But you won’t find a piece of gold just lying there like that. It’ll be a small part of the rock, so there will be a lot less gold than the rock itself. That means you’ll need to find a whole bunch of those rocks.”

That didn’t seem to phase him in the slightest and he continued to bring me rocks he was sure had gold in them. When I mentioned the concept of fools gold, he decided that he would consult a rock and minerals book we have at home so he would be able to recognize fools gold and it wouldn’t “fool” him. He also figured he’d have better luck looking for gold back at the house, so we wrapped everything up and headed home.

Once we got home, he educated himself on fools gold and then started searching for gold out in back yard.

I just told him to let me know when he found something.