Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Marbles
After several days of deadline pressure, I returned to Ricochet this evening intending to write a post. What did I discover? That everything I wanted to say had already been said. (Troy Senik: Mitt Romney still strikes a lot of conservatives as “someone who sees this as a game to be won, rather than a cause to be advanced.” If there were a Pulitzer Prize for individual sentences, Troy would just have clinched it.)
Instead of opining, then, may I simply offer a word on behalf of fatherhood? My youngest daughter, who turned 10 just yesterday, dragged me away from my work just now to force me onto my knees for a game of marbles. Just marbles. Thirteen mibs inside a string circle, the blue shooter for her, the orange shooter for me. When I missed an easy shot by about two feet, she erupted into such pure, unforced peals of laughter, collapsing onto her side and rolling on the carpet, that I decided right then that I had never experienced a more completely delightful moment. Then, the game tied at six apiece, I missed again, leaving her to make a long, tricky shot–and knock the last mib out of the circle, winning. Oh, the look on her face! Surprise and joy–sheer joy. For an instant, the very universe had to a ten-year old in pajamas.
“Dad,” she said, laughing once again after saying her prayers, “I still don’t see how you could have missed that one shot.”
Until tomorrow, Ricochet.
Published in General
While my daughter was at karate tonight I wrote in a coffeehouse next door. In a chair a few yards away was an old man I remembered from my college days – an impossibly remote professorial type, Olympian in mien, utterly self-contained, exuding a strange sort of protective acid that warned off attempts to intrude.
My daughter came bouncing in when her class was done, and I shut my laptop. We looked at the items in the bakery case, and I pointed out how some labels were in Papyrus font, and some were in Neutra, and how they clashed. The company did everything in Neutra. Papyrus was wrong. She rolls her eyes and says ONLY YOU THE FONT GOD CARES, which led to a discussion about fonts, and what they mean, and how you want your store to look, and how knowing the difference between one font and another is a skill you can parlay into a career. The quotidian intangibles of design.
The old man looked up with a cold stare: this vocal, fractious discussion of art was interfering with his reading. Children. Really. Must you?
No greater joy, Peter. Ain’t it grand?
So that’s how you play marbles! I was a jacks girl, myself. Played it for hours on end. Had a big tournament on my birthday, right after the piñata.
Little kids are so much fun to watch and interact with. I’m constantly marveling at the creativity coming out of my boys. My 2nd (8) was in a phase where he was determined to be a rock star. As we were driving to church, he piped up from the back of the minivan, “I know what my rockstar name will be! I’ll be Tony Crack.” After the laughter subsided he amended, “No, never mind. That’s not it.”
If you think your having fun now Peter just wait ’til you are a Grandfather or in my case a Boppa with 5 Grandaughters under 7. Now thats fun.
Sara: That was fun.
Bug: Yeah.
Sara: Leslah’s the silliest grownup ever.
The most excellent compliment I’ve ever got. ·6 hours ago
The sweetest story teller too.
Thanks Leslie,
Jim