A Piece of Rock

I've been pricing kitchen upgrades as part of planning some remodeling. You know what blows my mind? The price of granite countertops. I mean, it's a piece of rock. How can a piece of rock wind up costing more than a plasma TV? More than a computer? More than a pretty nice mountain bike?

It's a piece of frakkin' rock! It's not like it has internet access. It's not like it has complex moving parts. It's not like it has . . . parts. It has a part. It's a rock. A big rock. It's not even carved into something interesting, like the heads at Easter Island, or Michelangelo's David. It's a rectangle. I mean, a really expensive rectangle of rock is just one step above a really expensive dandelion.

Someday, someone will ask me, "Tom, just out of curiosity, what is the most expensive thing in your house?" And I'll have to say, "My bionic appendix, of course!" No, even worse, I'll have to say, "it's that slab of rock in the kitchen." Ugh. No, I won't be able to do it. I'll have to lie. I'll say "it's my genetically-engineered cat, a perfect replica of a cat from 100 million years ago that sat on the beach and ate pterodactyls." And they'll say, "Of course, I thought it had a funny look in its eye."