Wordplay’s Lost Marble, Explained

Q. Wordplay, you recently had a photo of what looked like a blue marble on your Facebook page and jokes about the “Lost Marble of Wordplay,” or something like that. Could you tell me what that was about? Was it supposed to be funny?

A. Sure, I can answer that. The lost marble of wordplay is a small blue marble about a quarter-inch in diameter that escaped from my “Lost Marbles” jar one night when I was trying to move something in the car.

Q. You mean, it’s an actual marble?

A. Yes. A blue one. It has some friends, too, and they all live in the Lost Marbles jar when they aren’t escaping and rolling inconveniently under seats and into inaccessible corners. I probably said a few bad words the night it happened.

Q. You actually have a “Lost Marbles” jar, or is that a joke, too?

A. Well, it may be a joke, but it’s an actual jar, too.

Q. Can’t you explain it any better than that? I don’t see why you’d waste time and space on something like that. It’s not even really that funny.

A. Well, it may not be that funny, but it was more just a matter of seeing a photo of something very unlike the marble and then just making a joke out of the size disparity.

Q. But why is it funny?

A. Well, think of it this way. Wallace Stevens wrote a poem called “Anecdote of the Jar”: “I placed a jar in Tennessee/And round it was, upon a hill.” It’s an object that’s somewhat out of place, insignificant, and slightly ridiculous in a way, but everything in the landscape seems to rearrange itself around it so that it assumes an outsized importance. It’s sort of like someone just saying, “OK, everybody look at this,” and all of a sudden, that jar is the center of the universe. It’s kind of like that.

Q. Who’s Wallace Stevens?

A. Well, now, did you pay tuition to Wordplay so that we are now responsible for teaching you about modern poetry? The check must have gotten lost in the mail.

Q. Geez, it was a civil question.

A. And a civil answer, considering. Just type “Anecdote of the Jar” into Google.

Q. So it was a literal jar?

A. Probably metaphorical, actually. Unlike my “Lost Marbles” jar.

Q. So, how exactly did you lose the marbles again?

A. A unicorn jumped on the hood of the car, dislodging a sleeping and entirely innocent bison, and in the ensuing fray (which I failed to get a photo of), the jar fell over.

Q. But . . . Were the unicorn and bison in the car with you, or were they on the hood? I thought you said . . .

A. I’ll tell it to you straight: there’s no room in my car for either a unicorn or a bison. But don’t you think the sudden appearance of a unicorn would startle you enough to make you drop something?

Q. There’s no such thing as unicorns; you’re making that up.

A. Well, yes, but they did somehow become the national animal of Scotland.

Q. So you were in Scotland when it happened? How did you get your car over there?

A. It grew the wings of Pegasus and flew over the Atlantic at breakneck speed, landing in a patch of heather.

Q. But what caused it to grow wings? Cars can’t grow wings.

A. Not under normal circumstances.