Gift Exchange 2007

Every year, some of our closest friends get together and have a Christmas gift exchange. It’s a White Elephant gift exchange, so there’s really no telling what gift you’ll get. We’ve been doing it for a few years, and it has been getting better each year. We put a rule in place last year that you have to actually MAKE what you bring to the gift exchange. Things get really creative. This year I decided I would write a short story about some of my closest friends. It was pretty good, and David read it to us all after the gift exchange, which did the story some real justice.I figured I’d go ahead and post the short story for the world to see! So without further delay… enjoy!

Chapter 1 - The Madness Begins

The story, as it’s told, begins on a chilly afternoon in the fall of ’88. It’s that time of year that everyone loves, but this particular week would turn out to have a mischievous tone. We were all gathered around a table at Pizza Hut celebrating our Book-It achievements. Little did we know that our lives were about to be turned upside down.
I was sitting next to Jason, the daredevil of the group. He was busy telling Marcus stories about his job as a bartender at the local lemonade stand. You see, Jason would indulge anyone in a story about refusing to serve lemonade to kids on a sugar rush, or having to drag some juiced up knuckleheads away from the stand. Marcus could roll with that - he was a big Mountain Dew guy and could relate to those stories.
Michael and David were across the table talking about puppet shows. You see, Michael was intent on being a puppeteer when he got older. He had big dreams of being a producer, he wanted to be the one guy who would bring puppet shows to the silver screen. David was trying to work out a deal where he could play harmonica on the first big movie. That’s his thing - always playing that harmonica everywhere he goes. I think it worked out that Michael would do a puppet show based on the story of David’s band - David and The Skydives. I play snare drum for that band, Marcus plays the tuba, David plays the harmonica, and Kurt, well, Kurt plays electric guitar.
Kurt was at Pizza Hut that night. He wasn’t sitting with us, he was sitting with Grannie across the room. He was too old for Book-It, he just loved sausage pizza. Kurt was much older than us, by a few years, and hung out with teenagers. He was known around town as a bully, but was usually on his best behavior around us.
Tonight was a mischievous night - just as my buddy Mat was about to tell me something seemingly important, a spitball hit me on the side of my face. It wasn’t just any spitball. It was the size of a baseball, and filled with slobber. Now, I don’t know for sure who did it, but I swear I saw Kurt in the corner of my eye snickering to himself. And if it wasn’t him, it could’ve been an accident, right?
Mat begins to tell our table a story about the big marble competition coming up in one week - MARBLE MADNESS! It’s the biggest competition of its type in the world. Advanced marble tossers from across the globe come to town each year to duke it out for the championship title. And Mat had saved his money for 4 years of his life to build up the marble collection he was going to take with him to this year’s competition. He had marbles from Switzerland. They were hand carved from glass by the oldest, wisest groundskeeper in all of Switzerland. He won them from an EBay auction for $100 plus shipping. That is a TON of money!
Mat continued to elaborate on the intricate design and craftsmanship of his foreign marbles, then reached into his pocket to show us these marvels. As he reached into his pocket, his grin began to turn into frown. My initial thought was that he felt around and miscounted the marbles before pulling them out. But then, a loud shriek erupted through the room. It reminded me of a song by the old rock band “Almost Lifelike”. Mat yelled “my marbles!!! I’ve lost my marbles!!! I’ve lost my fucking marbles!!!”
What followed was probably the longest silence I’ve ever experienced. It was probably 30 seconds, but felt like 30 minutes. Then Marcus finally spoke up - “… wow…”.
It was clear what happened. It was also clear that those marbles were the single most important thing to Mat at that point in his life. And we knew, all of us, that we had to help Mat find those marbles before the competition in 7 days.

Chapter 2 - Off to the Bottom

I spent some time the next day calling around and telling friends that we would need to get together and help track down Mat’s marbles. So I met up with Michael and David at the Rock Sea. It’s a small lemonade stand near school. We drank a few glasses and talked about our strategy to track down the marbles. Okay so where would marbles go? They love to roll. Then there’s the force of gravity. There’s no way they went anywhere uphill from where Mat was last night. So we went with the obvious answer. SHOCKOE BOTTOM! If these marbles had anywhere to go, it was downhill.
We all hopped on Michael’s scooter and rolled down to Shockoe Bottom. Michael suggested we check in Europa, a favorite stop of his. I would say it was more of a distraction than anything else. There were kids downstairs sniffing glue. You see, Europa is the kind of place where anything goes. Michael saw all of this going down, and pulled out his own assortment of various glues. Of course David joined in the festivities, but I couldn’t get involved that day. We had a mission. I pulled Michael and David out of Europa - I let them get some fresh air so they would be able to communicate.
We were back on track. Our next stop was obvious - Club Velvet. It was a hangout for troublemakers, and sure enough, standing outside was Kurt. He was very welcoming this time around. He had landed a gig for the Skydives to play at Jason’s birthday party. We talked about Kurt’s new guitar parts, his incredible tone, and how he was going to look like Keith Richards at Jason’s party. Michael asked Kurt if he had seen any marbles around town. Kurt brushed it off and suggested we go check out the new dance group performing inside Velvet “Girlfriendz”.
We all sit down at the only table left in the place, and each of us order the Legs and Eggs breakfast special. Just as we were getting settled, the lights dim. Smoke and confetti start pouring from the stage as if we’re at a Flaming Lips show. Two slim figures appear at the back of the stage - as they get closer people start throwing money at them… wow. Then, a laser light show appears behind them and they start breaking out into convulsive dance moves that I’ve never seen before. I looked over at Michael and David, they both had their hands over their eyes. Once the dance was finished, David started asking people in the club if they had seen any marbles. Most people had no clue what he was talking about, and thought he was somewhat crazy. But there were a couple of international marble throwers that mentioned they had heard a rumor about some wild-eyed older looking guy who tried to sell them Swiss-made marbles. Jackpot!
We collected the best description we could. So, take “wild-eyed older looking guy” and compare across all of our friends. Jason? Well, Jason wasn’t with us, and he was quite the opportunist. I thought about Jason’s motives - sabotage? Maybe. Money? Of course! I asked Michael and David, both who confirmed that it might as well have been Jason. Michael suggested we have an intervention. David suggested homicide. I figured it would be best to ask him about it first.

Chapter 3 - The Intervention

We met up with Jason at Michael’s place. It was me, the usual suspect, Michael, Mat, Marcus, and David. Aside from the glue assortment scattered across Michael’s coffee table, it was a good environment to question Jason’s motives. So Mat opens the conversation - “Okay listen up motherfudgewad, I need my marbles back now, if you don’t cough them now, you may as well start running you refugee!” Jason responds by pulling out a swiss army knife and threatening to cut Mat’s fingers off or some crazy stuff. You see, Jason likes to take things to the extreme. He once smashed the reflectors off of a bike when someone bumped into his bike. Once we settled the heat, Jason broke into tears, such a weak heart! He felt offended that we had all assumed he would do such a thing. In fact, Jason was sitting across the table from Mat that night at Pizza Hut. There’s literally no way he could’ve stolen Mat’s marbles.
Who else could it have been? I thought we had considered every possible person. Jason was in the clear. David would have no purpose with the marbles. Michael had been planning to do a puppet show documentary of Mat’s Marble Madness performance, so we knew it wasn’t him. Marcus was too good to do this, and everyone knew that. Who were we missing? I think a light bulb went on above every head in the room as we all reached the same conclusion - this was the work of none other… than the sly, mischievous villian… KURT!!!
It was all so clear. His evil grin that night at Pizza Hut buffet. His laugh when we asked for help at Club Velvet. His mischievous demeanor! It was Kurt all the way! We knew where to find him… and just in the nick of time. The Marble Madness competition was in just one day!

Chapter 4 - The Incrimination

We knew exactly where Kurt would be. We were all traveling by bike then, so we saddled up and took the high road for Carytown. That’s where Kurt lived. He was working at some fancy clothing store and would probably be on his lunch break, which meant he would be at Bev’s - the local ice cream parlor. Bev’s is where Kurt would meet up with his other older, smelly, sweaty, bully friends. We figured we could be outnumbered, so Jason brought his swiss army knife just in case.
We pulled up at Bev’s, and sure enough, Kurt was leaning on the wall with two tall grinchy fellows, looking as if they were just waiting for us to show up. We all pulled up and skid to a stop. Jason already had his swiss army knife out, Michael and David were getting each other psyched up, and Marcus and I were going to work out the arrangements. So we walk up to our FORMER friend, and I extend to shake his hand. I could almost hear the sound of marbles clashing around as he pulled his hand from his pocket to shake hands. He gave me the ol’ floppy, limp handshake. Marcus says “hey man umm… we know you have the marbles”, to which Kurt replied “oh yeah man don’t worry about it, it’s cool.” “What?! What do you mean it’s cool bro? You stole 12 handcrafted marbles from Switzerland, which will probably allow Mat here to win the Marble Madness World Championship, and you say ‘don’t worry about it, it’s cool’”?! Kurt took a few seconds to look around. Jason was swinging his swiss army knife around like a ninja, David was in a three-point stance, Michael was jumping up and down with boxing gloves on, and Mat looked completely empty, a boy without his marbles. And I think something in Kurt changed right then. His grin slowly turned into a frown. He let out a big sigh, reached into his pocket, and pulled out 12 glistening marbles. I thought to myself, is it really this easy? And just as he almost handed the marbles over, he said, “well, one thing. Is there any way you can get me a bottle of red wine? You know, we could all sit down over this and talk it out. And hey, you’ll have the marbles back.” As far as we were concerned, that was that.
That night, Jason and I stole a bottle of Two Shilling Red from Food Lion and made the exchange with Kurt. We had to trade him a bottle of wine for those marbles. But it was totally worth it. Mat took second place in that Marble Madness competition and went on to be a marble tossing sports broadcaster. To this day, he is still regarded as the boy who lost his marbles.

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