The Marble Game

Once there was a fat little boy who loved pigs and thought they were the coolest things ever. Whenever he’d see one he would gleefully follow it around.

One day he fell in behind a pack of Texas swine. One of the hogs looked particularly fine to the little boy and he followed closely right behind that hog. That hog rooted and snorted, stopping here and there along the way and generally making a noisy nuisance of himself. But the little boy didn’t care because he had become totally infatuated with that Texas hog.

That Texas hog loved to wallow around the crude oil tank farms and oily residues got all over him and everything he ate. It was so bad that even that hog’s little pig poops were covered with oil which made them all shiny - and fascinating to the little fat boy. He picked up some nearly round ones, all covered with oil and said to himself,

“Wow! These look just like bright shiny marbles! Maybe that’s what they are!”

And, he gathered up the round ones and put them in a bag that he began carrying for the purpose. Before long he convinced himself the greasy little pig poops really were marbles and began looking to get in a game with the other boys.

There were two groups of boys, some with real marbles and others like the little fat boy who had become infatuated with shiny pig poops. The pig poop boys demanded to get in the game with the boys with the real marbles.

“No damned way!” shouted the boys of that group. “All them things are, are just stinking, nasty, greasy little pig poops!

“That’s where you’re wrong” retorted the pig poop group. “These here things are the real things. As a matter of fact, they are realer that those shiny round hard thingies you fellers are playing with!”

And the pig poop group shouted so loud and so long that the boys in the other group felt obliged to let them into their marble games in all fairness.

At first, the greasy little pig poop marbles did OK. They certainly LOOKED the part. The greasy little pig poop boys bullied their way in and began dominating the game, and anyone who complained about having to play with pig poop was hooted down and called names, and disparaged in all sorts of clever, artfully devious ways.

Before long, the greasy little pig poop marbles began to show signs of being what they really were - obviously fraudulent as marbles. They stank to high heaven for one thing. They began coming apart at the seams and some disintegrated altogether. The folks with the real marbles pointed out the problems with the pig poop marbles, but the pig poop boys refused to acknowledge anything showing their little pig poops weren’t real marbles. They even deceitfully called the real marbles ‘fakes’ and ‘un-marbles’ and such.

As time went on, the defects in the greasy little pig poops became too much to ignore, and even some of the pig poop group began to see the truth of the matter. But, there remained a diehard bunch who could never admit the greasy little pig poops were not the real thing. They convinced themselves to the point that reality could not and would not be allowed to intrude.

The little fat boy was one of those. When others kept pointing out the all-too-obvious fraudulent nature of his greasy little pig poop marbles, he got all pissy and mad and wouldn’t play anymore. He stomped off home with his greasy little pig poop marbles disintegrating and rotting in his pocket and stinking to high heavens.

No one knows what will become of him and the others like him.