I had the strangest recollection today: a memory of mud marbles.
I was at home, lying on the couch just after lunch, having a bit of a siesta, and I suspect I may have fallen into a light doze when the thought of mud marbles flashed across my mind. Weird, I know.
It was odd that I should be thinking of mud marbles in the middle of the day when there was nothing in my present or even recent past that would have led me to think of marbles of any sort, let alone mud marbles, which was a silly little past time we had as kids, of rolling round, little balls of clay in our hands, baking them in the hot sun, and then painting them with nail polish so that they'd be colored.
Maybe it was the sweltering heat that made me think of mud marbles, I don't know, but I immediately sat up and, looking across at my husband, asked him, "Did you play with mud marbles when you were a kid?"
My husband, who must have thought that I was losing my marbles for a bit, was bemused. He had never heard of them. And so, I had to explain it to him and show him images of mud marbles I had found off the internet. And all the talk of marbles opened up the gateway for a recollection of shared childhood memories, so we went skipping together back to a past when children spent more time outdoors at play than indoors, eyes glued to mobile devices and television screens.
Incidentally, though I would prefer a time and space where children could play freely outdoors, I understand that times have changed and that it's increasingly difficult for them to do so safely and comfortably. For one thing, there's the heat.
Coincidentally, but on theme with our discussion, there was a trend on Twitter today where users shared funny tweets using the hashtag- Take me to a time when. When I came across the trend this evening, I again thought of mud marbles and my now sepia tinted memories of a childhood long gone. And while I didn't jump in on the trend on Twitter, I did wish to be taken back to a time when:
- Outdoor hammocks and swings made from car tyres and hanging from tree branches were common.
- Children gathered around circles drawn in the sand for games of marble pitch.
- Children had more fun playing real games outdoors of hide and seek and tag, rather than sitting zombie-like indoors playing creepy imposter games like Among Us.
- The weather was less erratic, seasons more predictable, and the morning and evening sun didn't feel like if it burned any hotter, your skin would start to smoke.
This heat in my part of the world is uncomfortable, and that's putting it mildly.
In my country, heat waves dance in the streets while humans cower indoors. Scattered showers make little difference other than to make the place more humid and hot. Makes one think of Hell on Earth.
When I was a kid growing up, Hell was described as an underworld of constant and intense heat, and I believed then that it was a physical place with a geographic location somewhere buried beneath our feet.
If I were to hold on to those childish beliefs today, I'd say these days it feels like instead of us heading up the stairway to heaven, some malicious hand has punched an elevator button causing Earth to plummet several floors down.
And so, as the sun's sweltering heat saps my energy, my eyelids droop, and I glimpse my eight year old son rewinding an old cartoon he'd probably seen a thousand times before. I'd love to tell him to go outdoors to play, but I can hardly do that, can I? He'd only come back to me baked as brown and as hard as a mud marble.