The colourful ball

On a warm spring afternoon, there was a ball lying in our garden. Its surface was quite rough and battered but the ball was still rolling as perfectly as you would expect it to. It had flown over a light blue wall and softly landed on our lawn. With its many colours, it surely belonged to one of the children in our neighbourhood. Maybe it had been a gift once.

Since its production, the ball has rolled around for quite some metres, that’s for sure. At first on short lanes in a factory, on black conveyors and through dark tubes, then tightly wrapped in its packaging, only to come to rest briefly in the hands of its new owner. And then it yielded up to its fate, a fate that every ball has to experience sooner or later.

It was pushed against walls, rolled over carpets, bashed in goals, jumped over obstacles, smashed glass to pieces, landed in thorny hedges, floated on water, was grasped, used as a seat, used as a weapon, gave pleasure, caused pain, brought trouble, decided the game, settled disputes, made friends, reconciled enemies and very often was in the centre of attention everywhere it went.

And as the ball was lying there in our garden, I was wondering, what it might not have experienced yet or what it would like to do eventually? But since there was no answer to that question, I thought, how would the ball like it to just do nothing for a change and just lie there and observe what others do.