Small Actions Can Have A Lasting Impact

Written By Allie Perry January 25, 2025

Someone hit me in the head with a rock and it’s making me think about actions and their impact, literally and figuratively. (Yes those words have two different meanings, no I don’t care how Webster has decided to update the lexicon.) 

But let’s back up, all the way to the ever-growing To Do list that’s eyeing me disapprovingly as I sit here scrolling on my phone.  

The simultaneously miraculous and dastardly little box stole my focus when its successful siren call rose up from my soft blue desk blotter and insisted I mindlessly flip through one insignificant social media post after another. 

“Buy this new gizmo from Amazon that I’m pretending to use in my own home so you’re convinced to buy one from my affiliate link so I earn sixty-three cents!”

*scroll*

“Check out my completely impractical outfit that drives the wasteful and environmentally destructive fast fashion industry!”

*scroll*

“Look how much cuter my dog is than your dog!”

*scroll*

Maybe but probably not, never, and that’s impossible, respectively. 

Social media isn’t that honest anyway, and I know it’s just a marketing tool disguised as entertainment, designed to keep me scrolling, envying, buying.

Still, I’m working hard to convince myself to be productive on this day when I was woken up two hours earlier than normal, and 3:46 p.m. somehow feels like either dinner time or bedtime. Possibly both in rapid succession.

As I sit slumped over, forehead supported by a hand curled in the same curve I’d make if I were shielding my eyes from the sun, my finger runs over a barely perceptible scar near my hairline. It’s a tiny mark most people never notice. It’s so tiny I often forget it’s there myself, despite the fact that I’ve had it since I was very little.

I got it one day at the beach, at the park that was walking distance from the street I grew up on. Not the big, busy beach; we never went to that one. I got it at the small one called Horseshoe Beach. (When I was little, I thought it had earned the moniker because you’d always find so many cool horseshoe crabs there, but I later realized it’s because the cove itself is shaped like a horseshoe. I maintain that my initial understanding of the name is far more interesting.)

For whatever reason, my parents decided on that beautiful summer day we should ignore the kiddie pool in our backyard and get our toes in the sand and the salt air on our skin. It was great idea, and we weren’t the only ones to have it.

The beach was busy. Full of people doing all the things people do at a beach…basking in the sun covered in a mix of baby oil and iodine, drinking Tab or Crystal Light, playing catch with their brand new Aerobie.

My sister and I were in the water, entertaining ourselves in some way I can no longer remember. Near us were two boys, throwing rocks into the water. The time-old and oft-repeated shouts of “Don’t throw rocks!” drifting down from the blankets further away from the water were either not heard or blissfully ignored.

I felt something hit my head. 

I initially thought I’d been stung by a bee, though I’d never been stung before and had no frame of reference for such an occasion. My instinct was to rub the spot that hurt. After all, that’s obviously the known course of action to cure our funny bones when we hit them on something, so surely it would work on my surprising new head injury.

It didn’t help, and when my sister saw my face she convinced me we needed to go find our parents. How inconvenient.

The gasps and horrified looks as we ran up the beach told me I was in fact very good at bleeding from the head, and mixing the water from my hands when I tried to rub the pain away had not done anything but exacerbate the abject horror that was my tiny, blood-streaked face.

I was immediately whisked away to the lifeguard shack. (INSIDE the lifeguard shack, no less, a place you usually weren’t allowed to enter. What a day!) The Super Experienced Lifeguard (which as a very small child I could not recognize as someone who was likely a CPR-and-first-aid-trained high school student working through their summer break) tried to clean me up, but as heads are wont to do, mine refused to stop bleeding. They recommended my parents take me to the emergency room. (Two new and mysterious places in one day! The stories I would tell!)

Beach supplies were packed up, sandy feet were dusted off (and dusted off again, because as a child with wet feet, there was no earthly way for me to prevent them from getting sandy again…how did the adults do it?), and we headed for the E.R. I think I’d stopped bleeding by the time we got there, and it was decided I didn’t need stitches. Yay! (It was also decided we wouldn’t be returning to the beach that day. Boo!)

The unplanned adventure left me with a story to tell and a barely perceptible scar near my hairline.

A scar that acts as proof that small actions can have lasting consequences. Because if I can remember the actions of two small boys on an initially-confusingly-named beach literal decades ago, I know we can all choose to act in ways that will help people form long lasting memories.

We can make art in a world that can always use more beauty.

And we can act to create memories for ourselves and our loved ones.

These are my specialty. I take the inspiration I find in life and nature and use it to make jewelry. Each piece I make is one-of-a-kind not only its uniqueness, but in the fact that there’s only one exactly like it in the world. I make jewelry that will help you celebrate milestone events or commemorate achievements, and I use my own two hands to do it.

So take this as a sign that your small action of buying a piece of handmade jewelry can create a lifelong memory for yourself or someone you love.

And remember, don’t throw rocks at the beach!