I must talk seriously now about my belly button. As some of you may know I am never with out a marble in my belly button. If I lose my marble at a giving point in the day and am too far from my other marbles to replace it- I will shove a ball of toilet paper in it.

I have had this issue since elementry times. And unlike many of my oddities- I know exactly where this one was born.

You see I have asthma and thus an inhaler. When I was young I was awefully careless with it. I have inhaled

lint, nickles...what ever else was in my pocket as I never capped it.

Well one day I was running through some rather tall weeds for a gal of my hieght out back behind my granny's Eventually I needed my inhaler. I took it out my pocket as I was still moveing and squirted it in my mouth. I was immediatly spitting and such for as I lifted it to me the mouth of it had scooped up one of those spitball looking sacks of spider eggs!

I ran home crying to my gram about the whole thing! I was sobbing on and on about some horror flick I had seen where spiders crawled out this persons mouth and how the eggs were gonna hatch inside me. SHe then tried to

sooth me by telling me that even if the babie spiders hatched they would not be able to crawl up my throat and out my mouth. They would instead probably use my belly button.

So it began. I always had my finger in there- thought if I could hold them in they would die and not get me. Eventually this got me in trouble as parents dont want strange children. So I began stuffing things in there to ward of an attack of spiders pouring out of my hole.

As the years have gone by I no longer believe that the eggs are still alive nor their product. But the whole experience opened me up to the idea that my belly button is a hole into my body and thus it needs to be protected. So, I have a large collection of marbles.