The King of Games. That’s one translation forYu-Gi-Oh!, the Magic & Wizards dueling card game and anime show my teen has been fascinated with in various incarnations since he was five or six years old. The magical world that fired his imagination and a unique bond between the two of us from the very beginning…
“I’ll never be a writer like you, Mom,” he says to me one day when he’s in second grade, when we’re in between leaving the book store (back when Mall’s still had book stores) after buying a collection of Calvin and Hobbs he’s been wanting and heading for the trading card store we always stop at when we’re there, no matter what. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Write novels?” I glance down at the Borders (because this is seven years ago, sniffle) bag filled, with a book that used to be hundreds of individual cartoons that he’d read once a day, but put together in an anthology have become something more. “No, I don’t necessarily see you writing a novel. But telling stories? You already are, with your imagination.”
“No I”m not,” he says, “I like math.”
And just that simple, just that young, the lines have been drawn.
Then we turn the corner into his favorite store and he pulls out his newest “winning” deck of magic cards and gets lost in the stories he creates each time he plays.
He’s not just a collector, even at this age. Even though he searches each display case he stumbles across for the magician or the dragon he’s missing. It’s not just about having something that a friend doesn’t have, even though for birthdays and Christmases for years he’ll ask for one of the “rare” cards that costs us more than a top-end video game. It’s about how he puts the cards together to battle and defend and the strategy that goes with which type of deck he builds, until any game someone plays with him becomes a unique story–HIS story.
“It’s a magic deck.” He says a few years later, when he’s about to start Middle School and most of his friends have stopped playing. Stopped dreaming. Stopped dueling with vivid cards filled with characters that have strengths and weaknesses and powers and realities that rush back each time you bring them to life again.
“But I thought you liked the Dragons,” I say, because I do. They seem so fierce and powerful and grrrr…
“Everyone does the dragons. People don’t know how to defend against a magic deck.”
It’s about being unique and different at this age. It’s about playing and winning his way, and surprising the older kids he duels with. And, evidently, about keeping it quiet that he still dreams and tells stories this way. My kid is aware and doesn’t so much care that some of the things he likes (computers and math and chemistry, vintage TV, tennis instead of football and baseball, and, yes, cool fantasy/role-playing games) aren’t what everyone thinks is cool. But he knows I do. Everything he is and wants and dreams is cool with me. And not just because he’s my kid. I share some of his off-center fascination with imaginary worlds, and that’s becoming cool, too.
“After all,” I admit, “I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. I wasn’t very good at it, but I was a tree sprite. I loved playing.”
“That’s weird,” he says, but he’s smiling and showing me more of his cards and explaining how each one works and how the deck works together. “You’re so weird, mom. Here. Why don’t you take one.”
It was a Soul of Purity and Light card, and I have it in my wallet to this day…
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