Reading the Dice

Story 6: Scales of Decision

Dice Roll: smiley, lightbulb, scales, L sign, masks, bee, fountain, beetle, tree

One day, Courtney sat at her desk, wondering how she should spend her day off. Should she read books? Should she go to the mall? Should she play video games? Should she walk across town and put together jigsaw puzzles with her grandmother? She frowned out the window, tapping her pencil on the top of the desk.

Suddenly, she had a great idea. To cure her indecision, she would leave the choice up to fate. Smiling, she stood and rushed to her closet. Digging through the pile she'd shoved haphazardly inside during her last room-cleaning session, she finally uncovered her box of supplies and props.

Placing the wooden box on the floor, she smiled at the painted theatre comedy/tragedy masks painted on the top of the box, then lifted the lid. She dug through tiaras, daggers, gaudy jewelry, colorful scarves, and foreign coins. At the bottom of the box was velvet pouch containing a handful of smooth stones she'd collected in the old wishing well on her last trip to Old Town.

Placing the pouch on her desk, she put the box back into her closet. Before shutting the door upon the mess, she grabbed her scales.

Once she was back at her desk, she poured the pouch of stones upon her desk and began sorting them by size; each stone was decorated with an image of an animal. After assigning each stone to a similar partner, she attached an idea to each stone and took turn weighing them against their partners on the scales. After one round, she was down by half for all her ideas of what to do. She re-sorted the stones and once more assigned each stone an idea at random and did another round. She continued until she had just 2 ideas remaining. Sorting the stones one final time, she chose a pair of stones—one marked with a bee, the other with a beetle—and placed one stone in each suspended plate on the scale.

One side clunked down onto the desktop. She grabbed out the stone and looked at the symbol on it—the beetle. She looked at the notepad of listed ideas, fingers tracing down until she saw which idea was assigned to the beetle rock. Visit Grandma. Courtney smiled.

Courtney walked down the street, hands in her pockets. She spied the L sign and hurried down the stairs to the subway. She hurried through the turnstile and got to the platform just as the train pulled up. She waited with the others on the platform while people exited the cars, then she followed the crowd onto the train.

After successfully getting off at her stop and getting back above ground, she hurried two blocks farther and went into the big apartment complex where she grandmother lived. The big fountain in the lobby trickled water constantly, creating a pleasant atmosphere in the large room.

Courtney took the elevator to the third floor and knocked on the door. Her grandmother welcomed her with a hug and then ushered her inside.

A plate of cookies and a mug of cocoa later, Courtney sat beside her grandmother on a faded couch, a folding table covered in puzzle pieces in front of them. Her grandmother was working on the edges of the puzzle. Courtney began sorting the pieces by color. There was a lot of green, plenty of blue, and speckles of red, yellow, purple, and orange. She looked at the cover of the puzzle's box; the scene was a sunny day at the park, containing two boys climbing trees. Flowers of various colors were scattered throughout the grass.

A few hours later, the 1000 piece puzzle was complete, and Courtney and her grandmother sat back to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment while they shared a bowl of popcorn and watched the daily gameshows.