Who Else Played Marbles At School? Thoughts on Generational Limbo
I was born in 1994.
Everyone talks of the ’90s, the good ol’ 60s, the hip-hop-hooped 2000s, or the generation of mustachioed coffee savants that came later.
But what about the ones in between?
I was born in 1994 so was still a silly little girl until the new millennium, meaning I can’t claim Linkin Park or Tupac as my own.
I remember my 1992-born sister listening to the Gorillaz on her walkman, hoop-earrings and flared denim jeans swaying to the beat of Feel Good chaka chaka, her crop-tops revealing the belly button piercing that sent my parents reeling.
I was too young for Walkmans or Eminem.
Cartoons that came out in the 90s gave me the creeps.
In the 90s, I was an observer. I played with toys that weren’t barbies, and my favorite pastime was going outside. I’m not sure what my male counterparts were doing — maybe they were playing video-games or giggling at porn, but I’m pretty sure that the majority of us generational limbo lurkers were happy to go outside to play.
So when the 2000s hit I didn’t have Shakira. Or baby blades. Or Pokemon.
Instead, we played marbles at school.
There was a time during 4th grade when I came to school carrying a few stray marbles in the palm of my hand. Everybody had been showing me their tiny balls of color and I. Was. Taken.
My first three marbles were opaque, colorless, simple, small, and see-through.
The game was easy, as you’ll remember: you had to hit someone else’s marble from across the playground and keep going until you did. If you successfully hit their marble with your own, you would win it.
For the 2 hours we got at lunchtime everyone would be playing marbles, hitting and losing and collecting.
At the same time, my “90s born” sister was smoking cigarettes and wearing eyeliner, but all this I couldn’t see or believe until I was much older. To me, my sister was the Queen of whatever she did.
And anyway, I was busy.
I was caught in the Great Game of marble-tag!
Little by little, my marble reputation was built on the backs of losers with poor aim and inaccurate throws.
I was so good that only after a few days I bounced into school with a whole fanny-pack full of marbles of all colors! The fanny pack jiggled to the tune of my success: it was like winning jewelry too precious to wear, or playing a delicate ball-game with the same stained glass you see in churches.
And then one day I won this really, really, big marble.
I mean, Huge.
And with these pretty jets of color inside — I couldn’t believe how they could make them so magnificent!
Before I knew it, I was challenged to play marbles by a small dude in the grade above.
This guy didn’t look like much of a marble man, plus he ate his snot.
We didn’t know each other, but in that moment, we were sworn enemies.
I thought: I’ll use my big marble and win straight away because he’s only got small marbles on him (no pun intended).
Large marble surface area = winning strategy. My 7-year-old brain didn’t even have to do the math. To me, it was a sure win.
I weighed the marble in my hand.
Math wasn’t even the problem here (if it were, I would have forfeited and run far, far away). No, this was a game of pure and unchartered skill.
Of which the past few recesses had taught me that I. Was. Boss.
I wasn’t.
I lost the big marble within two throws — my pride and joy — and spent the next hour of that interminably long lunch break sitting down on the recess floor, clutching my fanny-pack, quite literally defeated.
It was the first pretty thing I’d ever won with my own blood, sweat, and tears, and it had been taken away from me by a boy with visible cooties.
At the time, it was very, very dramatic.
By the time my sister was taking Photo Booth pictures with her friends and going to cinemas to hang out at Starbucks, I was still drifting in between two generations.
This made for a very awkward pre-pubescence; but when is puberty not awkward?
I would spend break-time stirring dirt with my best friend, making “soups”: a little grassy-garnish, bugs to taste, and a stick for a spoon and voila!
La delicatesse de l’enfance!
When I got a little older, I was allowed to sleep at friends’ houses — God knows what my sister was doing then. Probably getting her belly button pierced.
But during those sleepovers I would call my up my dad in the middle of the night whispering “get me the hell out of here!” so that my friends’ sleeping parents wouldn’t find me in my Mickey Mouse pj’s, wired phone pressed against my cheek, hell-bent on escape.
When we all grew up, we didn’t quite fit into the millennial mind frame, did we?
Even so, adults dismissed our depression and anxieties as just another “millennial” problem.
My grown-up sister — now successful, traveled, and grounded (as in, down to earth, not “grounded,” although her teen rebellion didn’t go unnoticed. Bye bye belly button piercing…) — thinks of Gen Z as uniquely different. But I find that I can relate on so many levels to these tech-savvy tweens.
Yet I’m not Gen Z.
I’m not a “millennial”.
And, despite my love of scrunchies and chauvinist Rap, I’m not “90s” either.
So what am I?
What are we?
This is what we are:
We are the Marble Masters of our respective playgrounds.
We are the kids who chose to go outside although temptation from video games could have easily lured us in.
We are The Matrix. We are the Motorola flip phone.
We had Tumblr for posting pretty photos without perpetuating self-harm or anorexia. Myspace and MSN for talking to boys we liked: statuses that read,
I ❤ P****S.
We had Facebook before Facebook was evil. We had Piczo.
We played computer games on Dad’s desktop before it was uncool. Outside, we played cops and robbers.
We embarrassed our siblings. We had two-month-long summers. We had scooters & skateboards.
But most importantly,
We were the kids that rode into school wearing Heely’s:
We grew up, smoked weed, got sad, got jobs, and coped.
We are born on the cusp of two generations, but we are not floaters. We exist. We wheel on by (and then walk again, with difficulty, because there’s a wheel in the heel of our shoe).
Anyway.
I don’t regret any of it.
That week playing marbles was the Best. Week. Ever.
And for the tiny moment when my fanny-pack was full, and I held my big, incandescent marble in my palm, I was Queen.
If you can relate to any of this, then that must mean that we are either one thing, something, or another.
Right?
