When the boy-child was at primary school, each year in around the second week of Term Three — maybe the first week in August — marbles started being played at school.
It wasn’t organised or announced. As far as I can tell, it was the most spontaneous, and in some ways the most momentous, event in the school calendar. For the boys anyway.
The craze usually lasted about two weeks before disappearing as suddenly as it came.
But in those two weeks, the boys experienced life intense and sometimes brutal: triumphs, failures, frustrations and anguish; rule-making, rule-breaking; bullying, humiliation and ranking — endless ranking. The marbles were ranked in value; the players even more so.
And always “playing for keeps.” Not just the marbles but the experiences too.
Posted to the Ragtag Daily Prompt | marble
Zimmerbitch 
Play is crucial to learning “life lessons” Su.
Leslie
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Absolutely! Piaget wrote about kids playing marbles, and what they learned from the game.
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Sometimes you learn what “not to do” in real life.
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Are those his marbles? When I was young, I collected marbles for a time. But I never knew how to play the game. I just liked collecting things. Like stamps, coins, rocks, and bottle caps. Later Beatles cards. Now ancestors, I suppose!
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They are his. Like his dad, he was/is a collector. He lives in shared flats these days, so the collections are here with us. And the Big T has moved on from beer cans (🤨) to motorbikes. I think ancestors probably constitute my only collecting impulse — unless you count cookbooks. But I consider them essential reference 😀
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Very cool! 🙂
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Like others, I had marbles too but only for admiration purposes! I’d get them out of the bag and look at each one – so beautiful.
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😀 I do remember playing marbles — badly!! Or perhaps my brother cheated.
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That is a really cool picture Su! I haven’t thought about that game in a very long time.
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Thanks; without kids in the house, I hadn’t thought about it either.
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I have fond memories of my marble days. The girls seemed to be omitted from the fiercest chest-beating comps. We were usually relegated to playing at home with our more skilled brothers, who of course won all the best marbles.
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That was my experience too. And certainly in the boy-child’s marble years, I don’t ever remember seeing girls being allowed to play.
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Thanks for the great picture and memory! It was Beyblades and pokemon cards for us. And it was brutal!
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Hehe. We had those too — and Bionicles, Yu-Gi-Oh cards and Tech Decks 😂😂
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I really loved playing marbles at school and think I still have a few of them somewhere stored away. They were/are such pretty little things. 😊
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😀 it’s interesting that you played at school. A few of us (slightly more advanced in years perhaps 😉) remember girls being excluded from schoolyard games of marbles. And I certainly don’t remember seeing any girls at the boy child’s school getting involved either. xxx
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That´s really interesting, especially since my mum told me she used to play with them too in her days, and she´s senior to your age. 😉 But I think girls and boys played separately back then. I was always a bit on the wild side and played more with the boys than with the other girls anyway. 😀
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That is interesting. We pretty much played separately too, and it seems to be the same now. I noticed from the boys preschool days that the girls were quite inclusive in their play, but were e clouded by the boys. Even quite little kids seemed to behave that way.
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