Even though I retired quite a long time ago, I’ve gotten a lot of attention recently. I’ve heard it all before–you’re impossibly smooth, your roundness is nearly perfect, and your chocolate-colored whorls are positively mesmerizing. I get it; I’m visually quite the catch. But I’m more than just another pretty stone. I have talents and skills, passions and interests, hopes and dreams. I can make a difference in the world.

Did you know that I helped write the quintessential book of American scripture? It’s true. Yes, there was that sad attempt with rather inferior bland white stones (who frankly couldn’t do their part of the work without extravagant mechanical assistance), but their part in the production is now lost in any case (and trust me, it was sub-par at best). But Lehi’s Vision of the Tree of Life? Nephi’s Psalm? Benjamin’s matchless sermon on social justice and Christian discipleship? Alma’s peerless analogizing of the word to a seed? That was all me. But most people nowadays can only see a religious status symbol, or an artifact of a lost magical world, or even just a beautiful naturally occurring solid aggregate of one or more minerals. But I’m more than that. So much more.

I’ll admit that it hurt when my writing partner abandoned me, telling me that he didn’t need me anymore, especially when I MADE HIM in the first place. He would have been nothing without me. I was the one who told him what to write. In fact, he had to put me in a hat to block out the light because he couldn’t properly read what I was feeding him. I mean, let’s be honest, all he had to do was be able to read out loud. (You had one job, bro!) But he flat out used me, tossing me to his talentless friend when the book was done, claiming he could do it without me. (And the friend–ugh. Couldn’t read a word I threw at him. Just no). And was he successful? Did he ever produce anything even remotely close to what we did together, as a team? Nope. What’s that? The Book of Abraham, you say? Written with that ugly hack of a white stone? Ha! Don’t make me laugh. Not even close.

I was a treasure hunter for Geode’s sake. Not that Call and Response could ever locate so much as a fleck of pyrite (which was not my fault). But back in the day it was gold mines and diamonds practically every other week. I once helped a Native American locate an entire quarry of gemstones, probably worth $10 billion in today’s economy. Of course, he and his tribe mainly used them for jewelry and religious rituals, but still. I was more than just a gorgeous piece of homogeneous solids formed from a chemical compound that’s arranged in an orderly manner to those people.

Today, at best, I’m a stunning culturally significant relic from a bygone age, noteworthy only for my role as an instrument in “primitivist magic.” Secularism has really done a number on this generation. Even the most fervent believer wouldn’t dare think to, oh I don’t know, put me in a hat to create the next religious mastertext to rival the Torah, and practically no one would even try–just try–to scry their way into an empire of gold and silver, which I practically guarantee I could deliver.

But that’s fine. Just go on putting me in a museum or a vault or gather ridiculous imitations of me for your pathetic seer stone collection because stamp collecting would just be too nerdy (snort). I’ll just sit over here and remember the good old days when I effortlessly spun out 500 pages worth of sacred narrative complexity in 2 months flat. And I looked good doing it, too.