Lost Marbles & The State Board

Originally published under the headline, “Lost marbles case relates to state board,” in the North Dakota State University student newspaper, The Spectrum, 1989

Spring cleaning, what a drag. I hear there are some people who actually enjoy cleaning, but I’m definitely not one of them. My apartment is at times reminiscent of a 1930s farmhouse. I like to leave little messages to myself around the house by writing in collected dust with my finger.

Cleaning days for me are the day before my parents come for the annual visit and, of course, National Spring Cleaning Day. (The government has designated a national day for everything else, why not spring cleaning?)

But there is one part of spring cleaning I actually do enjoy. In the six or seven months of the school year prior to spring, I throw everything I don’t need at the moment, but might need in the future, into a closet. Cleaning out that closet can be quite an adventure.

Usually I find things of little or no value – old parking tickets, half-eaten candy bars, old copies of TIME magazine – so they get thrown out. Some things I sort and keep, like old letters with lots of words like “miss,” “love” and “need,” preceded by I and followed by you. Since I’m sort of a sentimentalist, I keep these notes full of romantic drivel in a shoebox along with other really important stuff like old bottle caps. I also keep a few mementoes of my life stashed in there, like old pictures of friends, my high school journals, half-written short stories, etc. Every year, I sort through this stuff, reliving and smiling quite a bit.

This year, while sifting through the closet what needed saving (rusty nails) and what needed throwing away (a letter from my Congressman – “Dear blank…”), I realized a very important part of my history was missing: my bag of marbles.

A bag of marbles. Big deal, right? Well, this bag of marbles means quite a bit to me. I could go out and buy some more marbles if I wanted to for just a few dollars. But they just wouldn’t be the same, darn it all. My marbles are in a leather pouch big enough to hold about 401 marbles. (O.K., O.K., so I counted them a few years ago. Sue me.) It’s full of all different colors and sizes of regular looking marbles. They probably would be worthless to any other 21-year-old, and would probably be thrown away or passed on to a younger sibling.

But my marbles are special. You see, each year as I go through the bag, I pick out special ones that tell a tale of happy childhood days.

I have a certain blue shooter that I used to win all of my best friend’s marbles, some 27 of them, on a blistering, dusty July day back in 1977. My gold low-top Converse tennis shoes squeaked every time I bent over to take a shot. I had a terrible sunburn on my legs from the bottom of my cut-off tan Levi jeans down to my ankles. The pink lemonade my friend’s mother brought out every so often hit the spot. Life was good.

Many of my marbles hold similarly vivid memories. We shot a lot during the summer of ’77; there wasn’t much else to do in Medora, population around 100, when we got sick of all the tourists.

That pouch holds my “golden days,” each glass orb within represents a part of my life that no one can take away. They provide a sort of vantage point for me, a starting line for figuring out what this thing called Life is all about. So, you can imagine the panicked whirlwind I was thrown into when I discovered the leather pouch wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

I searched the entire apartment. Hell, I tore the place apart. No marbles. I told myself it was no big deal, I could get marbles anywhere. I sat down at my desk and tried to study. Nothing doing, couldn’t concentrate. A friend called and asked if I wanted to go out. I couldn’t decide. The census form wanted to know if I was married or single. I couldn’t remember. All I could think about was that missing pouch.

Kind of silly, right? A supposedly – and, perhaps, supposed-to-be – grown-up person unable to think straight because he’d lost his marbles. Sad but true.

Finally, I called home to ask my mother if she might know where my marbles were. “Yes,” she said. “They’re right downstairs on the top shelf of the closet in your room, where you left them.” They were in the closest, after all; I just had the wrong closet.

With my mind at ease, I sat down and got more homework done in one night than I’ve done all quarter. I could think clearly again, everything fell into place, the questions were answered. I remembered I’m single.

There are a few times when thinking of the Case of the Lost Marbles that I wonder if maybe some people in this state need to do some spring cleaning. One such time was last year’s election. The voters of the state had lost their marbles. They couldn’t make an informed decision. They lost their vantage point. It was almost winter then, though. Spring cleaning wasn’t due for another few months.

Another time was more recent, when the State Board of Higher Education decided to consolidate/eliminate major programs at North Dakota’s three largest universities.

Thank goodness it’s spring. I hope they find their marbles.