Do you remember those days in elementary school when it was cool to play marbles at recess? Landon and I were reminiscing the other day. He talked about how he used to be so good, but then the teachers made a rule against playing because they had been playing for keeps and he kept taking home the other kids' marbles.

I remember that my favorite part was just trading for the prettiest ones. Michael would always want to play, and I would generally lose, so I would much rather have just traded than end up with nothing.  The cat-eye ones were cool and all, but the steelies were harder to come by, and the gem-colored ones were my favorite.  At least we didn't have many steelies. Landon, on the other hand, doesn't find them that special because they could get them from old ball bearings on the farm equipment any time.

This all came up because we found some ball bearings in our desk. So we played some marbles. I was surprised--either I have much more control of my fingers now than when I was little, or I just had no idea how good I was at the time :) Landon was impressed that his wife was such a marble professional. Until I beat him. Then he wasn't so happy. We had to have a rematch of course, and he won the second game. So we left it at that.  Good times.