Hey, how are you?  My name is Egg Zample.  You can just call me Egg.  I know you’ve heard of Pokémon, everyone has.  Do you play? No?  Maybe you underestimate how educational it can be.  Let me fill you in.

You see, yesterday I had 82 cards and a mini storage book.  Today I only have 80 cards but I now have a tin instead of a book.  A tin is a small metal box used for holding my cards.  It is awesome; it has a picture of Charizard on it.  He’s a cool looking Pokémon dragon. Anyway, I was with some of friends yesterday and we were doing some trading.  If you don’t know how to read yet, you’ll figure it our real quick because you don’t want to make a bad trade.  Trading is how I get new cards.  Every card has value.  You know when you go shopping at the store and everything has a price tag.  It’s not like that with Pokémon.  It has a value, but it’s not specific.  Usually basic cards are worth the least and GX are the best.  But then it gets confusing because there are also basic GX cards.  They are good to have.  So my trade I did was 2 cards and a book, in exchange for a tin.  I really wanted this tin so I offered an extra card but that’s okay because they were basic cards and not worth much.  If I didn’t have a book to trade, it would have cost me about 20 cards to get a tin.  Then I would have been down to 62.  Some of my friends have plastic sleeves.  5 of them are worth 1 card.  A book is worth 5-10 cards.  I know, that doesn’t quite add up if a book is worth 5 and a tin is worth 10 and you can trade a book and a card for a tin, but that’s the way it is. 

If you want to make good deals, you have to be good at math.  If someone wanted 100 sleeves, it would take a long time to count out 5 sleeves for 1 card.  It’s easier to divide 100 by 5 and then you’d know that it’s worth 20 cards or 1 tin.  Some kids don’t want to wait long for you to agree to trade so you have to do the math fast before they cancel the trade or trade with someone else.

It’s also best to keep the cards sorted into categories.  It makes them easier to keep track of.  If you asked my mom she’d say I don’t know how to be organized, but she is wrong.  I just don’t see why I can’t stuff all my clothes into the same drawer.  I see purpose behind organizing Pokémon.  When something is important to me I take care of it.  Underwear is not that important.

One time there was a girl named Melon who stole some of my cards.  She stole from my friends too.  When we asked her about it she said she got them from her cousin. I knew she was lying and I could prove it.  I drew a star in the corner of one of my cards and she had the card I was missing and there was a star on it.  I had to think this through.  I could cry and throw a tantrum and tattle, but then I couldn’t trade with her anymore and she had the card that I really really wanted.  I had to work this out on my own.  I told her how I know that she stole my cards.  She wouldn’t admit to it but she did give them back.  I forgave her, but I keep a closer eye on her when she’s looking through my cards.  I could hold a grudge, but I decided to let it go.  That is a good skill that will help me in my life.

Being honest is a good thing, and I try to do it most the time, but sometimes you have to stretch the truth a little bit.  It’s not really lying, more like practicing my debate skills.  This one time I had a card that I dropped in the mud.  It came clean, mostly, but I didn’t want it anymore.  I had to convince the other kids that it was a really good card so they would trade with me.  I told them some good reason and they made the trade.  Someday I may own my own company and I will have to be able to keep my employees happy even when they have a lousy job.  I will use my manipulation, I mean, leadership skills that I learned trading cards.

Sometimes there is a card I want and my friends don’t have it to trade.  In that case, I have to get it myself.  Every week my parents pay me $3 for mopping the floors.  They are all different prices at the store.  Some are $5 for a pack and others are $20 box.  I need to know how long it will take to buy them so I have to do more math.  I have to figure out the price and divide it by $3.  That tells me now many weeks it will take to get enough money.  But don’t forget about tax.  That’s 8.2% of the total.  It’s a good thing I studied math.  I know to move the decimal two spaces to the left and then multiply.  I’ve had to figure this out so many times that I can do it really fast now.  My parents think I don’t like math, but really I do.  I just don’t like doing it in a workbook.  Pokémon is more important than a workbook so it makes it more fun.  There is one store that I’ve been to that has a Pokémon vending machine.  You just put in 4 quarters and out pops a card.  Not tax.  That one is easy, but you only get one card at a time so it’s not really a good deal. But, if I only have $1, sometimes the instant gratification is worth it. 

I have a friend with really good cards but he has chores to do every day.  He can never come out and trade until 12:30.  Sometimes I get so bored while I’m waiting that I play a little game, I call it “Minutes, Minutes, Go Away”.  I look at the clock and see that it is 9:42 then I figure out how many more minutes until 12:30.  There are 60 minutes in an hour so I can figure out that it will be 167 more minutes until he comes out to play.  This used to be a better game because it would take me about 15 minutes to figure it out and that meant 15 minutes I don’t have to wait to trade Pokémon.  Now it only takes me a minute or two because I’ve gotten so fast at it.  I’ll tell you a secret if you promise not to tell my mom.  I have gotten so good at time, that when my mom says I only have 5 minutes till bedtime, I actually get 8-14 minutes.  She must not be as good at understanding clocks as I am.  But don’t tell her, I want those extra minutes.

I spend most of my time trading but sometimes we actually play Pokémon.  There are so many more skills that I have to use for that…I won’t even get into that.

So as you can see, I’m really mastering math, reading, categorizing, organizing, telling time,negotiation, compromising, forgiving, patience, bargaining, self-control….you get the point.

So now you see why I get upset when my parents make me put my Pokémon away because the want me to learn something or do something useful with my time.  They just don’t understand how much I have already learned.  They think it’s just a game and I’m just playing.  They haven’t taken the time to notice how involved it really is and all the skills I am mastering.  Kids really do learn best when they are just playing because they are having so much fun that the learning happens secretly.  It is such a secret, that quite honestly…I didn’t even realize I was learning anything at all…I was just playing.