Losing My Marbles

I can name four types of marbles: cat eyes, clearies, colored and steelies. Perhaps I could name more if I hadn't completely failed as a father. When I mentioned these types of marbles to my son and asked if he knew of any other classes of marbles he told me that he hadn't even heard of those marbles before; he just assumed that marbles were marbles. When I exclaimed that I had clearly failed as a parent, he laughed.

I have tried to introduce non-electronic games into my children's lives. We didn't even have a game console until we purchased a RockBand Beatles Wii five or six years ago. They did come across games on the computer but we had avoided the gaming craze and I had thought that my kids had a good handle on basic childhood activities. Apparently, I still have work to do.

Marbles provide a perfect childhood diversion. The variety of games allows you to play with one, two, three or even a dozen friends. The biggest concern was whether you had a sock that was big enough to hold all of the marbles that you might win. I found that over time you won some and lost some but in the end everyone ended up with pretty much the same number of marbles as they started with. Usually the only thing that changed was the ratio between the types of marbles. If you really liked clearies, you would skip the opportunity to win a bunch of marbles for the chance to go after the coveted round glass.

There are four years that separate me from my next youngest brother. My brother that is just older than me is almost two years older. One time when I was between eight and ten years old my older brother and I were playing with our marbles when mysteriously,  one of them went missing. It wasn't just any marble, it was a cherished cleary that had no visible chips, cracks, or dings.

We did not live in a big house and we were playing in a fairly confined space. We had looked everywhere, even places that were impossible for the marble to have reached.  We lifted up the rug and we moved the chairs and the sofa. We turned the furniture upside down and we checked in cushions even though the marble had never left the floor. We had lost all hope until my younger brother said, "That marble is so obvious to find."

"Where is it?" we cried.

"It's obvious," he said again and again.

Getting more and more frustrated we asked him to show us where. He just showed us one spot after another, but no marble was found. We implored him that if it was so obvious that perhaps he could just give us a hint. It took us ten or fifteen minutes to realize that he didn't know what obvious meant. To the best of my knowledge, we never have found that "obvious" marble.