Lost his marbles

For weeks we've been hearing an odd sound in our car every time we rounded a corner—a rolling, a scraping, a gentle clinking as it came to rest on the opposite side of where it once was. We soon recognized it as the sound of a marble rolling around and we figured we'd better find it before it drove us crazy while making our four-day drive across the country.

We checked every cup holder (our van has a generous number of cup holders), every cubby hole, every secret compartment, every last nook and cranny we could think of. The rogue marble was no where to be found.

We continued to voice our consternation over the marble issue until Benjamin came forward to confess that he had "accidentally" stuffed a marble between the lining of the door and the window in—of all places—the back hatch.

How that could have possibly been an accident, we'll never know (because, honestly, he shouldn't "accidentally" have access to the back hatch), but a little investigation revealed that this was indeed the location of the missing marble.

It is stuck deep inside the recesses of our back hatch.

We began brainstorming on how to fix the issue: we would need to take off the lining of the door in order to fish around or perhaps we could just stuff something down there to keep it from moving or perhaps...

"Is it a metal marble?" I asked Benjamin. "Or a glass one?"

Benjamin started shrinking before my eyes; he pulled his head down and raised his shoulders until they were level with his ears. Appearing very turtle-like he asked with a trembling voice, "Which answer is the bad one?"


"Neither," I said. "I just want to know if a strong magnet might help get the marble out."

"Oh!" he said, relieved. "Well, in that case...I think it was a metal one. I can't really remember. I only remember that it was definitely an accident!"

I don't know why he was so terrified to answer that question. I mean, we were clearly annoyed with him but we already knew the marble was in there and hadn't really gotten him in trouble. I almost think he was imagining that the wrong type of marble being stuck in the door would be catastrophic (like, that it would make the vehicle explode or something). He was that nervous!

(And I guess I can understand how it could have been an accident in that he wanted to see what would happen if he stuffed the marble between the window and the door—and, lo! It dropped deep inside the door, which he genuinely didn't know would happen (and probably didn't want to have happen), and thus it was an accident).