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It ain't what you got but what you do with it that counts. -- Sparkleball wisdom

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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My Sparkle ball story begins on a dark November night in 1993. Trudy and I were zipping down a two-lane 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, 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 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.) But I was hypnotized. I got out of the car and walked over to the clothesline. The man said the "cuplights" were for sale.
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, Virginia clutching my "cuplight" as a carry-on. It was an immediate hit with my children, Augustus and Juliet, and that Christmas it became a treasured holiday tradition. (I don't remember when we first called it a Sparkleball, 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 now live. It's 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 Sparkleball 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.