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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!houxm!ihnp4!ihuxr!lew
From: lew@ihuxr.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: An educational experience
Message-ID: <755@ihuxr.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Nov-83 18:23:19 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxr.755
Posted: Mon Nov  7 18:23:19 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Nov-83 23:32:20 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il
Lines: 26

The summer after kindergarten or first grade, my sister and I spent
a week at the shore in Cape May with my grandmother. We attended a day camp 
for a few hours each day during our visit, and one of the activities
was to collect shells and set them in plaster filled paper dishes.
I went out to the beach with the others and wandered aimlessly, until
one of the counsellors came over and led me right to a nice conch shell.
I completed the project and kept the conch shell for a number of years,
using it as dish for odds and ends, before it finally disappeared from
my life.

A number of years after that, around my sophomore year at Brown, I had
a summer job in the U. S. Civil Service as a clerk at an Army Depot
(formerly a Navy Base) in Bayonne, N. J. This place is visible on
road maps as a big paddle that sticks out into Upper New York Harbor.
To get there and back, I had to travel perpendicularly to everything,
and I used to take a different route every day in a vain effort to find
relief from the intense tedium of the trip. During one of these sojourns
my mind happened to wander back to that day at the beach in Cape May,
and I had a sudden realization. THEY HAD PUT THOSE SHELLS ON THE BEACH
JUST SO WE COULD FIND THEM !!!! It was too long ago for me to feel betrayed or
anything like that, but I was really delighted at the realization, as though
I'd discovered something important. The funny thing was that it was so
obvious that they must have put them out for us, but for all those years I
had retained my innocent acceptance of the authenticity of the shell hunt.

	Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew