Polly-Acorn plays the Glad Game

 As she talked, she did not look at his face. Her rapt eyes were still on the dancing flecks of color from the prism pendants swaying in the sunlit window.

"And that's all," she sighed, when she had finished. "And now you know why I said the sun was trying to play it--that game."

For a moment there was silence. Then a low voice from the bed said unsteadily:

"Perhaps; but I'm thinking that the very finest prism of them all is yourself, Pollyanna."

"Oh, but I don't show beautiful red and green and purple when the sun shines through me, Mr. Pendleton!"

"Don't you?" smiled the man. And Pollyanna, looking into his face, wondered why there were tears in his eyes.~ Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter


Do you remember the film Pollyanna?  Heyley Mills won an award in 1960 playing a character by the same name.  She was the "glass half full" kid who went around cheering up the curmudgeons in her town, introducing them to the "Glad Game", where you find something to be glad about in every situation.  In the movie, Pollyanna transforms the life of one particularly crabby woman simply by hanging some sparkly-warklies in the old dame's window.  Ah, if it were only that easy...

I'm not exactly what you'd call a "glass half full" girl.  I can, if not careful, lean towards the curmudgeon-y, so I work at it.  I've been playing at my own "glad game" by making a ka-razy chandelier for over the dining room table.  

We put in a glass-beaded ceiling lamp from one of those home warehouse stores.  But the very next day, I regretted buying it because it was BORING.  Still the thought of returning it meant annoying my husband and son who installed it, finding the receipt which I probably threw out, and blah, blah, blah.  Til one hap-hap-happy day, I got the idea to start attaching old crystal chandelier prisms and other bits of colored glass to the beaded strands...

I've made a game of finding the sparkly bits at yard sales and what not. It's not quite long enough yet to catch sunlight from the window and shoot mini-rainbows around the room.  So, I'll keep hunting.

I hope I can add enough pieces so it gets really long and dangles and clinks and tinkles eccentrically and just skims the tips of the flames at a candlelight dinner -

Like something you'd find at a Wonderland-esque tea party.

Ooh, Pollyanna meets the Mad Hatter! I'm feeling less curmudgeon-y already.