When I was a little boy I used to play with marbles a lot. As well as the usual games I invented my own. I used to roll them off the top of the stairs and watch them bounce down and see how far they would go. I then started adding obstacles, things that I had to try and hit. So they bounced down and then flew past or knocked down things.
I passed this on to my kids and they loved playing. The game developed…you lost points if they didn’t make it all the way down the stairs, and you gained points for knocking down things (and we added an extra level – things you had to land on).
The marbles were split into colours so we could see who did what. We would set either a time limit or a number of runs and the one with the highest score at the end would win.
What was good about this is it got them away from the electronic gadgets for a bit and brought back a bit of the traditional values.
As the Christmas break approaches, I looked in the games cupboard to dig out Trivial Pursuit. I found the bag of marbles. The kids are grown up now…I wonder if they will show their kids how to play our game, or will the electronics world have totally removed any need for those old games.
