How Playing Marbles Taught Me To Succeed By Relying on Observation Instead of Dominance
Reflections from a time when things were both simpler and more complicated
“How’s your teacher?” Kip asked.
“Nice,” Matt said, “I got Mrs. Eucalyptus. How’s yours?”
“Too early to tell,” Kip replied, electing to be generous.
They stood in the yard in front of Hammill school. The ground was covered in asphalt and the wreckage of playground equipment had been embedded into the Earth.
“I think aliens built a playground on an asteroid,” Kip said, “and then that asteroid crashed right here in front of Hammill school.”
Matt gazed upon the wreckage, burned from the trauma of reentry, but some instinctive evolutionary trait kicked in to keep his mind from dwelling on misery. He changed the subject.
“Did you bring your marbles?” Matt asked, holding up his own bag of glass baubles and jostling them so that they made a pleasing sound.
“No,” Kip replied.
Matt’s face fell. “I suppose I could lend you some, don’t you want to play?”
Kip didn’t really want to play, he knew how it would end.
“Come on,” Matt said, tugging on Kip’s arm, “they’re playing over there.”
A small circle of kids surrounded two boys kneeling on the asphalt. Kip and Matt jogged over to have a look. They got there just as Terry West and Mark Altman began discussing terms.
“Three of my cat’s eyes against your grandma,” Mark said.
“You’re hysterical, a grandma is worth four cat’s eyes at least,” Terry replied.
“Okay, four cat’s eyes, but that means four shots.”
“Sure, but I get to go first.”
“Fine,” Mark conceded, but he seemed less happy.
“And you don’t get to take a shot until I miss.”
Mark looked skeptical.
“Come on, you were a big talker just a second ago,” Terry pushed.
Terry held up his grandma, it was a giant marble, more than twice the diameter of any of the cat’s eyes.
Mark glanced down at what he was risking. The four small marbles clinked in his hand. Even if he lost one or two and managed to win the grandma with the third he would come out way ahead.
“Okay, you shoot first and go until you miss.”
“Agreed.”
“For keeps?”
“Of course.”
Mark looked around at the gathering, “You are all witnesses.”
Kip could feel the tension. The stakes were high. The only sources of money were begging or finding coins randomly discarded on the street. Most of them had burned up their tooth fairy revenue years ago, and birthday money never lasted long. The currency of marbles was all that remained.
The two boys rolled their marbles gently into a chalk circle. Kip expected Terry to kneel down and flick his grandma with his forefinger to drive it into one of the cat’s eyes. But Terry had a surprise up his sleeve. He put his right toe at the base of the grandma and dropped down onto his left knee. He then reached down and lifted up the grandma from the field of play!
“Fault!” Mark howled. “Forfeit, forfeit, hand over your grandma!”
“No forfeit,” Terry snapped, “I’m setting up a rainbow shot. You never called no rainbows!”
There was a general utterance as everyone agreed Mark had never declared no rainbows.
“What the heck is a rainbow?” Mark said. He looked put upon, as if the situation had turned unfair.
“This is a rainbow,” Terry replied. Leaning down, he used the grandma to trace a huge arc that went right by one of Mark’s cat’s eyes. Arc drawn, Terry shifted his position so his toe was now beside the targeted cat’s eye.
“You can’t do that, you can’t change position once you’ve picked up your marble!” Mark protested.
“It’s a rainbow shot stupid, that’s what it means,” Terry snapped.
The situation was getting ugly. Kip sympathized with Mark, who seemed to be growing into an awareness that he was about to be fleeced out of four marbles. But Terry still had to make the shot, and if his grandma rolled out of the circle the turn would shift to Mark.
Terry picked up the grandma and held it between his thumb and forefinger, squinting one eye as if looking down the barrel of a gun.
He made two quick jerking motions with his hand to practice, and then let the marble fly on the third. It struck the cat’s eye with a snap, and then rebounded back against Terry’s shoe where it lay motionless. Terry scooped up the cat’s eye, and then shifted around so that he faced his next target. Toeing the grandma, he made another rainbow. A few moments later all the cat’s eyes were in Terry’s pocket. Upon grabbing the last, he scooped up his grandma, jumped to his feet, and walked away at a brisk pace like he’d just broken a lamp at a friend’s house. Mark was too shell shocked to say anything.
Kip watched Terry go. He half felt he should stop him.
Mark was seething somewhere between fury and tears.
“Rainbows,” he muttered, “who ever heard of rainbows?” He kicked at the ground and marched off.
“C’mon,” Matt said, “let’s go find a marble game.”
“Do you really want to do that?”
“Why not?”
“Well,” Kip said, “either you lose your marbles, and that makes you miserable. Or you take somebody else’s marbles, and that makes them feel miserable.”
“Well, what else are we supposed to do?”
“Let’s just look around for marbles that people have lost, I’m sure there are plenty around here.”
Matt snorted.
“No thanks, I’m going to find a game.”
“Okay,” Kip said.
Matt trotted off and was soon kneeling at the center of a crowd of kids.
Kip glanced around. He’d learned long ago that it was better to project the appearance that he was occupied in something. A person who is standing around doing nothing, often gets told by others what to do.
If I were a marble, Kip thought, where would I hide?
He kneeled to see if he could detect any incline in the play area.
Common sense dictated that the playground structure should be built on an incline so that it wouldn’t become a sink hole to precipitation.
At Hammill school, however, Kip noticed that the playground structure actually sat in a hole.
Okay, if marbles had been kicked around, or fallen out of somebody’s grasp or pocket, they were likely to have rolled towards the supporting struts of the playground.
Would anyone have seen them?
Well, maybe not. People are kind of strange, and they sometimes don’t see things they aren’t expecting to see even if those things are right in front of their face.
Therefore, even though many of the playground kids were focused on marbles in the yard, they might overlook marbles in the playground where they were focused on the swings and the slide. Their minds weren’t in marble mode. Would that make the marbles kind of invisible?
Kip decided to go take a look.
Keeping his eyes on the ground, he walked in the direction of the playground. He paid attention to cracks and low spots, anything that might attract an errant marble.
As he got closer, he thought he saw a twinkle at the base of one of the support struts. He quickened his step.
Kneeling down, he took a closer look. There was a crack in the asphalt that surrounded the strut. There, leaning up against the wooden playground beam, was an enormous green glass grandma with a blue swirl in the center. The marble was wedged in the crack, but Kip found he was able to pry it out with his pinkie finger.
He picked the marble up.
“Wow,” Kip said, hardly believing the treasure he had discovered.
He glanced around to see if anyone was looking, but nobody seemed to be noticing him, so he pocketed the marble. Then he gazed around to see what he could see.
Off in the distance, there was another glint, and Kip trotted over to find a clear cat’s eye with a red swirl. Later he found a blue cat’s eye that was as dark as night.
All of these treasures brought him great joy, and he slipped them into his pocket where they rattled together.
He soon discovered that there were marbles all around, right in plain view.
Why didn’t the other kids notice them?
It kind of felt like he had super powers.
Was it true that you only saw the things in life that you were looking for?
How many treasures had he missed simply because he hadn’t known to keep his eyes open?
Well, he knew now.
The first bell rang, that was the warning bell. Matt trotted over to Kip.
“How did you do?” Kip asked.
“I lost,” Matt said, but he was smiling. His mom always kept his supply of marbles replenished. Matt considered the dime store his personal marble storage space.
Kip held up the first grandma he’d found.
“Whoa!” Matt said, his eyes widening, “how did you win that, you don’t have any marbles?”
“I didn’t win it, I found it.”
“Get out!”
“I’m serious.”
“Lucky!”
“They’re all over the place Matt, and when you find them nobody gets mad. There’s no reason to fleece anyone out of marbles when you can just walk around and pick them up off the ground.”
“Nobody’s getting fleeced.”
“But Matt there are marbles everywhere, just look for them!”
Matt laughed. “That’s crazy talk, there aren’t marbles everywhere.” He was so sure of his assertion that he wouldn’t even make a cursory glance around him.
The bell rang again, this time the bell meant business.
Kip and Matt walked towards the school.
Kip had learned a lot about observation in the last fifteen minutes. He applied his newfound skills during the walk back inside. It was just a matter of keeping his brain on instead of switching it off and heading into dreamland. Up ahead he caught sight of something glinting in the sun and his heart rate began to accelerate.
What was that?
Could it be?
No it couldn’t, there’s no way anyone would have overlooked that!
But then again...maybe...
Ohmygoditis!
These thoughts raced through Kip’s mind as he walked along beside Matt behind a group of other kids. Any one of them might have looked down to spot the treasure lying right at their feet.
But none of them did.
It was an enormous steelie!
The steelie was like a giant ball bearing, much heavier than an equivalently sized stone. It was essentially a nugget of playground gold. Terry would have had to wager at least twenty grandmas to make a play for it, along with conceding the first shot.
Even then, Kip wouldn’t have taken the wager.
Excitement rushed through him, one more step and it would be his.
Nobody else saw it.
Arriving at the steelie, Kip kneeled down to grab it.
“What are you doing?” Matt asked.
“Look at this Matt,” Kip said, lifting up the king of marbles, “a steelie!”
Matt’s mouth dropped open, “Wow, you’re so lucky!”
“I’m not lucky, I was looking.”
“No, you were just lucky.”
Kip sighed and dropped the steelie into his pocket. The sound of the jostling marbles was like the song of a river.
Everybody else was fighting over the same handful of marbles while Kip quietly looked down and noticed the treasures nobody else could see.
That’s the whole story in one sentence.
Some people spend their lives trapped in scarcity, competition and manipulation. Others learn to observe differently — and suddenly realize opportunities were scattered everywhere the entire time.
“I’m not lucky,” Kip said. “I was looking.”
Really great story telling.