Found 'em!

I have never played marbles.

It was not a thing, although non-electronic toys were still popular in my childhood. Slinkies, Frisbees, Etch-a-Sketch, Legos, Spirograph, Colorforms, G.I. Joe, Matchbox and Hot Wheels, yo-yos, and one of my all-time favorites, Nok-Hockey, all had and in fact still have popularity. I played with them all.

But not marbles.

And yet, here they are.

My house is at the bottom of the hill, and occasionally round objects roll down from the children up the street. Soccer balls, lacrosse balls, tennis balls, golf balls, all have made their way down here and are returned when possible. These marbles were out in the street as well. I find it hard to believe they rolled here, but who knows? Anyway, I have this small collection of marbles in my possession at the moment.

Seems like marbles were huge in the lives of boys in the past. Generally when a movie wanted to show boys at play, marbles were involved. Sometimes they were key to the plot. You could even count on Superboy playing marbles, at least in 1945.

And being a Super Weenie about it. 

While not up there with activities like baseball and failing to kick the football, marbles were a regular pastime for Charlie Brown of Peanuts. In fact, the plot of the 2006 TV special He's a Bully, Charlie Brown (taken from a 1995 series of strips) centers on the game.

But when I was a boy, marbles just weren't a thing. I don't know why. Maybe because it is best played on a sandy surface, like the old sandlots, and when I was a kid we mostly played on grass, blacktop, or ugly carpeting. Really, it never came up, at least not where I lived. But I had marbles in my possession from time to time, although I don't know how. Just among the dingbats and detritus that pass through the lives of kids.

My dad played marbles when he was a kid, and showed me how to shoot once, but in his childhood he was really more interested in stickball and stoopball.

Marbles are enshrined in the National Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong Museum of Play, in Rochester, New York. People still love them, and some know all the various types, like the Peppermint Swirl, the Latticino Core, the Bamboozer, and the Corkscrew (all of which sound like sixties dances). It looks like the three I found are a Clearie and two Cat's-Eyes.

If you feel like you need a new hobby, the rules for playing marbles are readily available online. But personally, about all that I hear of marbles these days is people wondering whether I lost mine.

The Phrase Finder, that Internet stalwart of the common tongue, says that the expression "to lose one's marbles," meaning to go nuts, appears to have dated to America in the late 19th century. Prior to that it meant to become furious; the site has an example of that from New Zealand. In both cases it was tied to boys who found themselves sans marbles -- whether losing them by accident or in a game, it does not say.

I have always found "lost your marbles" to indicate a vacant kind of insanity, the kind where one is ethereally and unreasonably detached from reality, rather than the kind that indicates intractable red-faced fury. But I'm sure it's been used for all kinds of craziness.

There was a fellow in town, a bearded gent who died about a decade ago, who had been known for his marbles. Now, now, what I mean is that he gave them away. Mostly he was known for giving away coins with angels on them, something to carry to remind the people he met that we are blessed. He gave me one of those, which I did carry for ages. He was also a member of AA, and I was told that when a newcomer would come in he would present the man with a marble, telling him that if he wanted to drink he should throw it away as hard as he could -- because then he would have lost his marbles.

Maybe I'll give these three away to people who look pretty close to being nuts. Tell them as long as they hold on to it, they won't have lost all their marbles. There's always a lot of people like that around.

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P.S.: So what happened to my angel coin? I lost it, of course; I think it may have been in a suit that went to the dry cleaners. The incident would be too on-the-nose to use in a novel. Maybe a Hallmark movie. "I've lost my angel" is not a phrase likely to catch on, though.