By Rex Alphin

Really? Do you really take me for a fool? Do I look that naïve? Does this face appear that gullible?

Let me get this straight (if you can tell it to me without laughing). You show me this little object about the size of a pencil eraser.

It’s yellow and white and pointed on one end. It has no motors. It has no computer circuits. It doesn’t need gas or oil or propane. It’s not titanium. It weighs less than a penny. It has no taste or smell. It makes about the same noise as a rock if I drop it on the floor. It doesn’t speak or move or make any semblance of motion.

Now you tell me to stick it in the dirt and cover it up. In the dirt! Are you kidding me? Now, if you had said to put it into some highly sophisticated combination of rare materials that took years of careful experimentation to devise the precise needed formulation, I might — might — think about listening to you. But not just plain old, everyday all-over-the-place dirt that’s under our feet and gets on our shoes and our cars and on 3-year-olds’ hands.

Now you tell me — and this is the crazy part — that in 90 days that little yellow, tasteless, motionless, weightless piece of whatever will become a 10-foot-tall structure with 20 arms!

Are you kidding me? In 90 days? And it will be green? Really? Where — please tell me, oh great one — did the green come from? And how in the world does something so small become something so big? On its own? Where are the springs or pulleys or wheels or batteries? Come on.

And no, I will not stick it in the dirt to prove it, just to watch you laugh at me so you can tell people how stupid I was. If this were actually true, don’t you think it would make the news? Would it not be plastered on billboards and exalted as a miracle? If this tall tale were an actuality, it would be the talk of the town.

Scientists and priests would come from afar to marvel at such a phenomenon. Humans would drive for miles to witness such an event.

Please leave me. Go find some other victim to perpetuate your hoax. Get your laughs from some other unsuspecting fool. But not from me. I was born at night — but not last night.

Rex Alphin of Walters is a farmer, businessman, author, county supervisor and contributing columnist for the Suffolk News-Herald. His email address is rexalphin@aol.com.