I finally got to use my Pokemon card!

So this week, I'm babysitting one of my second-cousin's kids, like a second-niece and second-nephew or something.

     And her little girl, who's 8 years old, is a total kindred spirit when it comes to all things nerdy. I don't know if I'm allowed to give her name online, so I'll call her Skylar. 

     Skylar's gotten into Pokemon from her dad, and their family has a huge collection of Pokemon cards. Like, a 3-inch binder with pages and pages of them, plus the three Poke-decks that they play from. And the cover of her binder has a picture of about 15 Pokemon that she drew herself! It's so cute, and it totally makes me wish I'd played Pokemon when I was little. She knows all their names, and all their evolutions (she calls them "evolvements" and I don't know enough about Pokemon to know if that's what they call the next one up, or if I'm right in thinking that they're called "evolutions" instead. Hehe). 

     So I have a Stufful card, and it's one that Alex bought at Toys-R-Us and gave to me. It's a really cute Pokemon, and this one has an ability called "Baby Doll Eyes" where it can keep the opponent's Pokemon from being able to retreat on that turn. Its secondary ability is a tackle that does, like, extra damage, and that's really good—After you've used Baby Doll Eyes and trapped your opponent, you can do that tackle and they can't get away from it.

     I had no knowledge of this before Skylar's dad told her she should teach me how to play Pokemon, since I was showing her Minecraft (she picked that up lightning fast, by the way). So she got out her personal Poke-deck and her mom's deck and set it all up at the kitchen bar for us to play. 

     I was so lost, and I had that newb feel hitting me as I had to ask her to explain each and every move to me. But she explained them all, and the cards and what they were for, each time I asked. She's a great kid.

Appraising my Pokemon card

     Soon after she set it all up, I told her, "You know, I have a Pokemon card. Just one."

     "Really? What card is it?" she asked, instantly interested.

     "I think...I know it has babydoll eyes, but I don't know..." 

     She was confused, and when I went to my purse and pulled it out of the pocket where I keep business cards, I said, "Stufful. That's the name of the Pokemon."

     "Oh, Stufful—can I see?"

     And from there she wanted to take it out of the shrink wrap cover that it was still sealed in, and she carefully slid it into one of her extra sleeves. "You can keep this," she told me, and she continued to inspect the card. "This is one of the last Stufful cards they made," she said, pointing out the number 110/149. I asked, "So there are only 149 of those cards? And I have one?"

     She then explained that there are 149 different types of Stufful Pokemon cards, and that this one has the Baby Doll Eyes attack and the Tackle attack. Then she went to her deck and pulled out another Stufful, which had a different illustration and a different set of attacks. I was intrigued. 

     Time flew by as Skylar showed me how to attack with the cards in my deck—how to set them up on my "bench"—and how my Stufful could be played at the end of a round (idk what they'd call it, a match maybe?) when the opponent Pokemon's HP was low enough for that damage from my second attack to take it down. It was so fun! 

     One of the greatest things that I've experienced has been finding that connection that someone shares with me. 

     Sometimes it's discovering that another student grew up with the same Abeka homeschool curriculum that I did (it was at a Knowledge Bowl competition, and both of us knew the answer to a question about who invented the automatic reaper from our history book in 5th grade, because we could picture the exact spot on the page that talked about Cyrus McCormick). Other times, it's finding out that another MK has a common love of Tolkien and other fantasy series like The Inheritance Cycle. Once, I met the guy who had grown up with the books, and had first read The Fellowship of the Ring when he was about 11, just like me! (can you guess who that was? 😊)

     I got distracted on this post but I'm finishing it up so that I can write more posts and have them come in order... x) I had a fun time with these kids, and I can't wait until I get to see them again.

—ACS, August 2018