I was wrong

I'll blame it on old age but I was wrong this week. Hey, everybody can't be like the President, right?

I've been thinking about the word "touchstone". I ws thinking that the proper definition is "something we keep returning to." I recall years ago hearing that once a year young men would go out with their dads on a special date and walk the property line. They would reach markers, like an oak tree or a stone and have to touch it so they would better remember that this is a property marker. I guess as we became more forgetful and lawyer prone we relied more on surveyors. Anyway, I was thinking about inserting the trait of "returning to certain touchstones" into the qualities of a character in a story I'm working on.

But before jumping into the fire I decided to check the definition. Of course by now you've run off and done the same thing, right? And you already know that the definition is:

"a black siliceous stone formerly used to test the purity of gold and silver by the color of the streak produced on it by rubbing it with either metal."

Vaguely I remember something about this from the years when I was interested in geology, back in the dark ages when I was collecting rocks. Nothing like a twelve year old carrying a bag of rocks to really make one wonder about his future.

So I'm wrong about "touchstone." But hey, someone around here will tell you that I'm not only wrong about that minor trivial matter. Time to rock and roll.

G