Starting this story at the point where I almost had a heart attack when I caught a glimpse of "Mr Marbles" in the back seat of my car would be fun but I think you need to hear the story from the beginning to realize how dumb , or should we just say severely memory challenged I am.
So let's go back about 5 hours. It's friday morning and estate sale is just opening. I head to the second floor as I usually do to check out the bedrooms looking for vintage clothing and accessories. I head into the closet of first bedroom I see and find "Mr. Marbles" staring up at me from the floor. He is dressed nicely in a black suit with a bow tie but he is eerily staring at me. He is smiling but his smile is hiding something quite spooky and sinister. I can't help but to stare back. Next thing you know I think we're having a who can not blink the longest contest. (he won). I'm supposed to be looking for clothing and I can't take my eyes off of Mr. Marbles. Finally I see that he is wearing a big sticker that says $5.00. Knowing I'm wasting time in this creepily mesmerized state I picked him up and literally threw him into my shopping bag. Let me tell you, I don't think he liked that! I could just tell by the way he was looking at me. I tried to silence his stares by putting a vintage fedora over his face. This worked for awhile but somehow his empty eyes and false smile kept re-surfacing. I ignored him and kept on shopping. By the time I got to the check out lady he was at the bottom of the bag. The estate sale lady had me unload the bag so she could ring me out and when I set Mr. Marbles on the counter she said "oh thank God someone is buying that thing, I want to get him out of here!" I had a moment of panic ... why am I buying this ventriloquist dummy... why does she want him out ... has he been staring at her too?? ... is this a toy or a creature of the night? And then I proceeded to pay for him anyway and promptly set him on top of the box she had given me to put my stuff in.
End of story right? Not really. So I have a box that I'm carrying out to the car. Both hands are on the outside of the box. Nowhere near Mr. Marbles. And as I'm going out the door onto the porch his head pops off of his body and drops to the porch stairs and as if it was in slow motion tumbles from step to step to step and lands in the yard face up. So now I have Mr Marble's head on the ground and his body in the box. Another shopper picks up his head to assist me as I am still with my arms full and as she sets his head back in the box she says "creepy" and then walks away. Is she saying creepy because his head flew off or is it some sort of passive aggressive assessment of me because I bought the darn thing. I'll never know. I did manage to finally get the box into the back seat of my car right behind the drivers seat and then headed off to the next sale on my list.
Had a great ol time for the next 4 or 5 hours of shopping and finally got down to the business of picking up some groceries. Pushed my shopping cart right up to the back door to load them in (trunk was full of vintage) and as I was putting my hand on the door handle I caught a glimpse of Mr Marbles looking thru the glass at me and being the highly excitable creature that I am ... scared the poop right out of myself and scared the cart collector right next to me too. He said "you ok m'am" as I finished my mini scream. How do you begin to tell a teenage boy cart collector that you are fine, but you were just shocked to see a menacing little ventriloquist dummy in the back of your car. You don't. You just say ... yes I'm fine. And then like a weirdo you get in your car with your little creepy friend in the back seat and drive away.
P.S ... Mr Marbles is the name of the ventriloquist dummy that Kramer had on Seinfeld and that's how my new friend got his name.
My husband, brother-in-law and two nephews got a hold of Mr. Marbles this weekend and had two straight days of fun with him. Seems as if hiding him in beds, taking pictures with him and taking him out on adventures is quite the fun way to spend some time.
Here he is on Sunday getting ready to go frisbee golfing with the men-folk. So I've come around to accepting Mr Marbles into the family. Because there would be quite a few of the family members who would miss him if he was gone. And for only 5 dollars ... well I guess he was worth it.


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