Playacting Drama – What’s Your Caption?

The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human. ~Ursula K. Le Guin

Thanks to all of you who suggested such great captions for Wednesday’s picture. You came up with some good ones. Of course. some suggested captions about losing one’s marbles and others about finding those marbles. Several of you suggested that somebody might have trouble getting up off the floor once all those marbles were sorted out. A few of you said she might lose count. Lauren suggested counting marbles instead of sheep to help you fall off to sleep.

Janie noticed the arrowheads that are on the floor by her hand. Nobody else mentioned them and I didn’t remember they were there until she mentioned them. Jolene suggested  my sister might be a little OCD and Nancy had the same thought with organizing them by color. Loved Connie’s sensible caption that explained why my sister is on the floor since if she was trying to count them on a table those marble would roll right off. Gail had a mom’s view by saying the kids’ marbles would get confiscated if they were left on the floor. I liked Emily’s caption. She’s obviously been at parties or gatherings where if you guessed the number of something in a jar you won something. Betty and Dana are ready for some marble games with Dana a dangerous opponent since she played marbles with the boys when she was in school. Paula said she fixed a yarn circle on the floor and her dad played marbles with the grandkids. Fun idea.

But the caption that was nearest to the actual happening was Sandi’s who said her brother would divide up the marbles with one for her and two for him. Well, my sister didn’t do that. But she was dividing up the marbles. After Mom died a few years ago, we had to clean out her house and go through so many keepsakes and memories. These marbles were keepsakes as some of them were stone marbles that our grandfather had once played marbles with and others were our dad’s.

So what my sister is doing, down on the floor in front of the shelves where the marbles had been stored in glass jars for years, was counting out one for her, one for me and one for my sister. We all ended up with our own jar of marble memories.

Not that we actually remembered our grandfather or dad playing with the marbles, but we could imagine them as boys, shooting those marbles in a dirt ring in some schoolyard long before we were even a glimmer of a someday idea. The stone marbles are misshapen and chipped from the play which makes them even better.

Whether my kids will ever want to divide them up and keep them, I can’t say. But my sisters and I kept a lot of keepsakes that we couldn’t bear to throw away. For example, I have a little pocket notebook that my dad sketched pictures in when he was eight or nine and the slate he carried to school. One of my sisters has a notebook that my aunt used to keep a list of every book she read. Then there’s the postcard my grandfather on my mom’s side sent home from France in WW I. How could we throw any of that away? Well, maybe somebody could, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t even throw away marbles. 🙂

Now, here’s a new picture for your best captions. Youngsters can find a lot of entertainment in a box of old jewelry. If you leave a comment with your idea of a caption on this post, you’ll get another entry into the drawing to win your choice of one of my books. I’ll pick four winners. Deadline to enter is Monday, September 28, 2020 at midnight EST. So two more pictures for captions with new chances to throw your name in my drawing hat coming up Wednesday and next Sunday. You must be at least eighteen to enter, but you can get help from your kids coming up with the caption if you want. I’ll draw the winners by random number and notify them by email. Hope you have fun thinking up a caption for the above picture.

So exercise your imagination and come up with your best caption. I can’t wait to read them.