I've mended my first sparkleball so many times it looks like somebody sat
on it. But lit up at night, it still looks almost perfect. Thank you my dear friend Trudy for making
that fateful u-turn.

On a November night in 1993, my friend Trudy and I were zipping down a two-lane highway outside Tyler, Texas when I shouted Stop! Turn around! Go back! Go back!   Trudy made an immediate u-turn. And then another, until we bounced up the dirt driveway of a battered mobile home.
  There, in the dark, strung across a clothesline, were a bunch of lit-up plastic spheres. Each one blinking, dancing, whirling to its own multi-colored rhythm. It looked like a formation of little UFOs hovering over this empty piece of Texas.
  A man with a beer came out to greet us. He proudly said the lightballs were for sale. "Cuplights" he called them.
  He pulled one down, and up close, we could see it was nothing more than a bunch of plastic cups and a string of Christmas lights. It was hard to imagine such humble objects coming together to make something so absolutely magical.
  We bought three: one for me, one for Trudy, and one for our childhood friend, Finley, who we were on our way to see in Dallas.
  A few days later I flew home to Richmond VA clutching my "cuplight" as a carry-on.