On days when he doesn’t have an evening meeting, our son hurries home from work to spend some time with his children. It is helpful to their family if he can take responsibility for the youngest child while his wife puts the finishing touches on dinner. All the children in the family have limits on their screen time, but the school-age children are allowed an hour of video watching or audio book listening on the iPad at the end of each day. The youngest, however, isn’t ready for that much time in front of a screen. Sometimes he and his father do farm chores. Although he can’t carry much firewood, lift buckets of chicken feed, or toss bales to the cows, he enjoys being with his dad, and he likes to be around the animals. His favorite activity is going to the beach to throw stones in the water. We have a gravel beach, and sometimes we meet them when we walk down to watch the sunset.

Watching our youngest grandson throw rocks into the water brings back so many memories. I can remember going to the river with my father and throwing stones. My dad taught me to skip rocks, and I love searching for the perfect flat stone. I taught both of our children and numerous nieces and nephews to skip stones. When we meet our son and grandson at the beach, I can’t resist joining them. Our son is the family’s most talented stone skipper. He has a left-handed underarm throw that gets the rock to the water at just the correct velocity and spin to make a long series of splashes.

Just in case you aren’t a fan of the art of skipping stones, I need to clarify that there are two ways to judge a stone’s throw. Skippers count the number of slashes. It’s pretty easy to get a stone to skip once, resulting in two splashes. A bit more velocity in the throw and in the spin can result in multiple skips. It is common for us to achieve six to eight splashes, and we’ve gotten lucky with as many as a dozen. Skimmers are getting splashes, but the goal is not to count the number of splashes, but rather to judge the distance traveled. When I was a kid, getting a stone all the way across the river so that it landed on the opposite bank was the goal. We skimmed our stones. A good trip across the river might involve two or three splashes, but it made the distance.

I don’t know about competitive stone skipping, but the world of competitive stone skimming was rocked by scandal this year. Eastdale is a tiny car-free island off the coast of Scotland, where there is a tradition of holding the World Stone Skimming Championship each year. The rules of their competition are simple. All stones must be “naturally formed” on the island. Competitors are not allowed to import stones for the contest. And all stones must pass through the official measuring device called the “ring of truth.” It is a piece of flat steel with a precise 3-inch hole cut in it,

This year, the event drew 400 competitors, each of whom threw three stones. That’s 1,200 stones that had to be inspected with the “ring of truth.” Competitors came from 27 countries. The competition was remarkable in that it was the first time a person from the United States won. Jon Jennings, of Kentucky, skimmed his stones a cumulative distance of 177 meters. It isn’t bad, considering that Jennings is primarily a stone skipper who runs stone skipping contests back at home. The only prize of the competition in Eastdale is a trophy and bragging rights. No betting is allowed.

His victory, however, came after the competition was marred by scandal. Kyle Matthews, the official judge of the event, examined all the stones used by competitors. However, when the throwing began, some observers noted that some competitors’ stones were suspiciously round, too perfect to be natural. Upon further examination, it was discovered that there had been some “nefarious shenanigans.” When confronted, the competitors with the suspicious stones confessed to their mistakes and accepted disqualification.

Matthews won’t name the disqualified persons, but did say they “expressed their sorrow, sadness, and apologized for bringing the sport into disrepute.” What they had done was to gather larger stones and then ground them down so that they were perfectly round and fit the “ring of truth” too perfectly. The winner noted that there were some attempts at cheating, but was grateful that they were discovered before the competition was completed. “I think that it’s one of those fair statements that, you know, cheaters never win and winners never cheat,” he said.

When we go to the beach, we don’t worry about changing the stones that we find. A gravel beach doesn’t have that many flat stones. The action of the waves tends to round them into balls rather than flattening them into disks. And we don’t throw many three-inch stones. The ones we find are usually smaller. And we don’t compete. Our grandson hasn’t yet mastered the art of skipping. He’s content with a single splash for each stone. He has figured out that bigger stones mean bigger splashes. However, bigger stones are harder to throw, so he has to select stones that he can actually get to sail out over the water a few feet. His father and I look for the flattest stones we can find and occasionally find one that will give us a pleasant amount of splashes.

I’m sure that children have been throwing stones into water throughout the entire course of human evolution on this planet. And I’m sure that millions have discovered the combination of spins that produces skipping and skimming. People will continue to do both for as long as there are people on Earth. As the judge of the contest says, “There’s something very pure and very satisfying watching stones skim across water.” We’re lucky to be able to witness that purity and feel that satisfaction as often as we want.