I hadn’t respected the ownership principle – the window of time that is needed for a child, adult to obtain, claim and own an item before feeling comfortable with letting someone else touch or hold the item.

I was desperate, as desperate as a gambler at a Vegas slot machine on a losing streak, but knowing that the next move would be the cha-ching.

The pause was painful.

“I’ll trade you.”  That piqued her interest. 

“Like what?” she questioned.

I scanned my mental collection, the Black Stallion set, she read them all and it wasn’t her thing.  What would my sister want?

I thought and spoke simultaneously: “Benji.”  And an injection of thrill, desire, sniveling hunger, fire, the negotiating dance of sealing the deal surged in my collector’s blood.

She looked at me in shock.

Guilt dammed the desire with my sister’s next words.  “But Chris. You love Benji.” 

I was Belmont Racetrack and the thunder of the hooves reverberated through the air and the roar of the crowd swelled with the staccato of the hooves, and the flaring breaths of the horse as the marble was rolling into the homestretch into Big Daddy’s hands. 

I mumbled with a droopy eye:  “Yah, yah, yah, Benji, for Benji.”

“Chris, are you sure?”  It appeared she knew me better than I knew myself.  She could see behind the impulsive, desperate marble collector whose eyes were glazing and cracking into a glass orb.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”  An otherworldly disloyal gruff voice escaped from my mouth.

“Okay.” She agreed.  She looked at me one last time, the last vestiges of disbelief left her, “You’re sure, Chris?”

“Yassss, I’m sure!”  I impatiently blurted out.

Somehow, some way, Benji was in my hands, always at the right place, at the right time.  I don’t even remember running to my room to get him, but he was there.  I handed over furry, comforting, super cute Benji and she placed into my hand an old notched, cracked, chipped up, fissured, uneven, uncircular blob of glass.  The weight of the marble and my conscience deadened my hand and all the collector, gambling, desperate, rapid, pulsating blood slowed down to a stop.  I was now the proud owner of an old, ugly, cracked, marble found in mud at the base of a tree.  I, trying to absorb the ownership principle, held on to it, but with each second that passed, the air of my accomplishment balloon hissed and squealed like a dying pink pig.

The next day I searched for my sister.  She was reading a book in her room.  I held in my hand that crusty old marble.  Regret leaked all over me like an old diaper.  “Jules, I changed my mind.  I want Benji back.”

She protested:  “Chris, you promised.”

I fired back with the no tactic, desperate non-skill of a beaten soul: “I know.  I changed my mind.”

“Chris. You promised!” she repeated with a tone of appeal to the last good part of me that was left in my hollow soul.  The Bible says: “Let your yes mean yes and your no, no.”**

I couldn’t argue with the good book, and she had given me a chance, more than one, in fact I think the number was 3.  Benji had a new loyal owner, one who was faithful and true, and would care for him.

On the chessboard of life Principle checkmated Emotions and desperate decisions.

I was now the proud owner of a cracked marble and a life-long lesson. 

*Yoke it – to dip the ball into the cylinder of a basketball hoop, to dunk it. Urban Dictionary

** Matthew 5:34-37