The art of marble games

...children addicted to this little round-shaped glass ball...

It is rounded-shaped, starting as little as nose shit to as big as baseball ball. The name is Nekker and nekkering is how you play it. It is called by marble in English spoken countries. Consisting of three colored-paintings just like a rainbow. Nevertheless, some of them are colorless, consist only bubbles in it, the colored ones usually green, silver, purple or blue.

...childhood is the best phase of my lifeindeed...

Gunungan is the simplest marble games. The ring is round-shaped and has a hole as its center. The hole is as big as a marble itself, whoever can go into this hole by one shot, voila; it’s a hole in one ! Starting the game is easy, at least there are two ways to draw the first player, ‘close’ and ‘far’ distance system. The line of outer circle lines is the border. ‘Close’ system took the first drawer by whoever can make the closest distance from the line, so did the 'far' system. The close system is the common one. The champion can use his mascot to his first shot, just shoot as hard as you can.

Shooting techniques may vary. It consists of two ways, one hand and two hands. For one hand fist, you can use your thumb and pointing finger for the easiest fist. Alternatively, you can use your middle finger with thumb also. The second fist is more complicated, as this is the mix between middle finger-thumb techniques with two hands. The left hand for handling the marble, and the right hand for shoot. I never make it ! However, you must aware, you cannot cheat this way by using your elbow. We used to call it by nggontlom ! It is dishonest way to play !

The next step is to get the bets. You have to crush the bets. The bets itself are marbles from each players. If you manage your shot without being trapped within the circle then you can have all bets outside the circle line. If you fail, you die in the first round, we call it by sekoek. What happened if the bets last ? Anarchy !

You start to kill each other’s. You can shoot your rivals mascots, so do they. Finally, only one person stays alive; he can take all the marbles from his defeated rivals. This way, who gets the first bet not always win, he could lose his bets if his mascot gets killed ! The smartest kid has this way. He did not want to get the bets first, the bets themselves are not his goals anyway, only kills the rival mascots is the easiest way to win.

marbles....

The second game is getting excited, Jirak. You only make a vertical line, it is like a fishbone-shaped diagram. You can place your bets in each fishbone tips. The idea is whoever shot the head; he can get all the rest. However, when you hit the neck, you can only take bets laid from neck below. The drawing system is the same as gunungan system, using close and far distance system also. This time we use the head part as center.

This game needs a straight and plain area. The wealthy children usually play this game because they have many marbles to bet. They often use the best jockeys to win the competitions. The best jockey is the one who has the highest hole-in-one record, shoot the head only ! Keliek was best in jirak game even he was the best jockey ever. Djendoel was the best in two-hand fist, while Nothol was the best player in gunungan game, and the last one was Nggobek “the longest dick” Sunarto. He was the trickiest marble player among us, played nggontlom techniques frequently but denied in the same time…what a boy…

And how about yourself koeaing ? Me ? I think I was not the best but not the loser either I tell you what, I often have had my experiences with marbles... I used to have marbles as bullets for my catapult. And you know what ? You don’t have any ideas about plunging the marbles in to kerosene don’t you ? It is cracked ! However, the cracked-line-patterns were so beautiful to see...

Koeaingdinekkeransiah!
Always find the beauty of destruction....