Marbles

I thought I should write a blog post about one of the very important things in my Argentina life: marbles. The game of marbles is definitely the most popular game to play at recess. Almost no one plays marbles where you just play for fun and don't take the other person's marbles if you win. If people get a marble that looks really cool, they often trade it for more than one marble that aren't too cool, so that they can have more marbles. Every time the bell rings for a short ten-minute recess, about 5 people in the class yell "ulti!" which is short for ultimo, which means last. They want to be last in marbles because then you have an advantage. The reason people want so much to be last is because if you go first, you have no chance of hitting a marble because there are no marbles out, and if you go second, you only have one marble to try and hit, and you probably won't hit it. But if you go third, you have two marbles to hit, so if you accidentally miss the marble you were aiming for, you might hit the other one. People do whatever they can to win, because they want to win marbles from other people. One example is that if they shoot their marble and it ends up close to the other marble, they roll it back a little so that it will be a further distance to hit the marble. They do this to make it harder for their opponent. That is not allowed, but it sort of is allowed, because everyone does it (including me). The most respected kids in the school are the kids who are really good at marbles. My friend Matias is one of the best marbles players, even though when I played with him I did better.

The rules for the small marbles games that people play are: the first person shoots their marble. Then the second and third and any other players shoot their marbles and try to hit someone else's marble (usually at recess there are two or three people playing a game together). Some people play where you get to put your marble a hand's length closer to the other person's marble before you shoot, and other people play where you can't do that. Then if you hit the person's marble, you get to keep it. But not everyone plays this way, some people play where you have to hit their marble two or three times instead of one time, before you can keep their marble. That is all I have to say about marbles.