Oliver Loses His Marbles

If you were to lose a thousand small and possibly heavy things, what
would they be? This question easily ensnares two lovely assistants,
who jump up and down excitedly when they discover there's a trip to
the Ax Man involved.

We wander the aisles. Rubber stoppers? Wingnuts? Resistors? Assorted
baby doll parts? Unicorns? Ooh, look, a periscope. Light bulbs?
Communist Sorry pieces? Golf ball cores? Dice? Damn, too expensive. We
find ourselves stopped again in front of the marbles. They're shiny.
Clearly this is a day for Oliver to lose his marbles.

But what to do with them? Empty them out in a lobby? Down flights of
stairs? Falling hazard. Janitorial nuisance. Not so cool. Instead we
should do something pretty. Public wash basins? Is there a public
bathtub somewhere? A fountain perhaps.

We do the math. 50 marbles is half a pound. 1000 is ten pounds. Fits
the budget. We select five different varieties of blue and proceed to
the cashier, who measures out two pounds of each. A project she asks?
A mission, we respond.

After dividing the marbles into three lunch bags and grabbing
accompanying beverages from the standard neighborhood coffee shop, we
proceed to the fountain of choice, in probably the busiest part of
downtown St. Paul.

And so we sit ourselves down by the fountain. Birds, sun, trees, bag
lunches, and mischief. A steady stream of people wanders through and
stop to by the fountain for a bit. Children, old folks, Japanese
tourists, people stuck working Saturday, concert-goers, a policeman or
two, homeless.. is there a high-school graduation happening nearby?

We discreetly plop small handfuls of shiny things into the fountain
when no one's looking, slowly making our way around the perimeter.
Small children lean over the water and point down at them. They're
much prettier than the uncollected coins. I take pictures.

After about a half hour it begins to rain. We huddle under the trees
and compare lunch bags. We're about half-way done. The rain lets up.
We go stand on the fountain rim while the square is still deserted.
The rain comes back, and harder. We throw handfuls of marbles into the
center and then retreat to a bus shelter.

When the rain finally stops, we are a bit emboldened. We zing marbles
off rocks and statues. Finally we're down to our last handfuls. I
propose we drop them directly in front of spectators (preferably
children) before departing, to let them put two and two together and
come up with a thousand.