One Marble's Journey

        A couple of years ago at a dinner with M's colleagues a very funny man not really named Tom told us that his sister had recently rung him up from the States to tell him that she had pooped out a marble he’d dared her to swallow when they were children more than thirty years before. She’d had a foot massage that day which had apparently stimulated her bowel to move with an energy hitherto unimagined. Her intestines had had themselves some kind of spring cleaning and with all the shuffling and shifting around the marble was loosed from the intestinal fold into which it had settled all those years ago.

        “Reflexology can do that,” the host of the dinner told us in his Venezuelan accent as he walked by with a platter of barbequed fillet.  “They start rubbing your toes and you begin to fart.”

        Well, I was riveted. I just couldn’t believe someone could carry a marble around inside them for thirty-some years.  And I certainly hadn’t been aware of an ‘on’ switch for my bowel lurking on the deceptively blank-looking bottom of my foot.  I think a few of us standing there listening to Tom that day may have looked a bit sceptical because he added that his sister is a doctor and took a sharp clinical interest in the proceedings.  I wondered – literally couldn’t help wondering – if she had felt the marble coming out or had only been aware of its passing from the sound of it clinking gently against the side of the toilet bowl. 

        A few months after that when I was just starting this blog -- cobbling together the first entries -- I wanted to tell the story of Tom’s sister because, come on, literature doesn’t get more entertaining than that.  But as it happened, an Alexander McCall Smith book I was reading right around the same time had a character in it who mentioned hearing about a man who pooped out a marble after twenty years.  When I read that passage I put down the book in wonder. Well, for crying out loud, I thought.  So much for the amazing, one-of-a-kind marble story.

        So I didn’t write about it on my blog.  The startling singularity of the incident was clearly not as singular as I’d thought. Maybe a lot of people knew someone who had pooped out a marble.  The other thing was, what if someone thought I’d stolen Mr McCall Smith’s idea and was just making up the bit about someone named Tom and his sister?

        But I don’t care about any of that anymore.  The story is true (except Tom’s name) and too rich not to share.  I hope you got a laugh or even a tiny thrill of astonishment from it.  Sorry that it’s a bit of a gross subject.  I did warn you that toilets come up in my blogs quite often.