
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.
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On
a dark 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, who was driving--
and being one of my oldest and most trusted friends-- made an immediate
u-turn. And then another, until we were bouncing up a dirt driveway to
a rundown 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 carrying a beer came out. (By this time,
Trudy thought I was totally crazy. I mean, we're on a dark stretch of
Texas highway about to talk to an inebriated man-stranger outside a battered
mobile home.)
I was hypnotized. I got out of the car and walked
over to the clothesline. The man said the lightballs were for sale. "Cuplights"
he called them.
He pulled one down, and up close, I 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 clutching my "cuplight"
as a carry-on. It
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was an immediate hit with my children, and that Christmas it became a
treasured holiday tradition. (I don't remember when we first
called it a Sparkle-ball, but we did and that's what it's been ever since.)
All
these years that old Sparkleball has been my constant companion.
Through divorce and a move from Richmond to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Across the country to San Diego where I lived (and surfed) for ten years.
And now remarried, and living in Texas. A full cycle.
Like me, the Sparkleball is a little worse for wear. Some
of the cups are paper-clipped together. Others are stapled. I've mended
it over and over, but the lights still work fifteen years later.
I finally
taught myself how to make Sparkleballs and now have made dozens. I've
had Sparkleball-Making Parties. I made Sparkleballs for a bar in San Diego.
Friends say I should start a business or charge for the instructions.
But every
Christmas when I hang up my original Sparkle- ball and plug it in, I'm
reminded of that dark Texas night and how it's those little detours we
take in life that give us the most joy. And I reaffirm the fact that if
I, an egghead serious negativizer, can get this much pleasure from something
so simple, maybe I need to give it away. This website lets me do that.
Just
call me a Missionary of Sparkleballs.
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