So I found Jorma looking at Magic: The Gathering cards online a few days ago much the same way that I still wistfully look at stickers. I like to look at them even though I haven't collected them since I was about 12. I never buy them, because, well, what does a 33 year old stay at home mom need a pack of stickers for?
But later I saw him looking at them again. When I asked if he wanted to start playing he responded that there wasn't anyone that he could play with. To which I said, I bet we could find some 10 year olds up the street.
He is somewhat used to my sense of humor but for some reason didn't think it was as funny as I did, and then got a look on his face like a sad and dejected puppy. Intentional or not, the look worked and I felt mildly guilty for the next couple of days.
So, to placate my wearied soul I told him that if he really wanted to play, he could get us both a deck of cards and I'd play it with him. He didn't wait for me to tell him twice, by the end of the day he had in possession about 400 cards.
I mean, I can play cards... Uno, Poker, War you know... cards. I mean how complicated can it be? Well apparently, quite.
While His Majesty, Connor was having his bath that evening, Jorma sat on the sink and explained how a few of the cards in the game worked. This took several minutes and there are a bizillion cards, he was just explaining a few of them. I tried really really hard to pay attention, I tried to store it all in that little bit of space left in my brain that isn't used for rationing Cheerios and chasing around our child all day long. But when I try to replay it in my brain to write it out here, it only comes out as, there are land cards and you are playing with a green deck and you can tap cards and something about hits and spells. But I do remember looking at the cards. They have illustrations and some of them are foiled.
oooooooo. Shiny.
Teaching me to play this game may be the biggest challenge that our marriage has ever faced. Maybe we could collect stickers together instead.
1 comment:
You've no idea the danger you've just put yourself in, encouraging such a habit in your husband.
Collectible Card Battle Games are the scourge of modern society. It has been estimated* that over 300 acres a minute of rain forest is destroyed just to keep up with the unholy demand for such card games as “Magic – The Boredom”, “Yugi-o”, “Iraq: Quagmire Magic!” and “Lovable Dance-Dance Battle Worship Master Satan”.
They have an awful influence on today's youth, and an even worse effect on the nation's husbands.
I should point out that Jorma once possessed a distressing amount of these cards. When he moved to California, he gave me what I honestly believe to have been around 35 – 40 pounds of the things in a few gigantic cardboard boxes, and bid me give them to Jay.
There had to have been thousands of cards. During the middle of a hot and hellishly humid day, the likes of which only Charlotte can seemingly produce, Jay and I had to make multiple trips to my VW Beetle, hauling boxes out of the back seat, climbing the three flights of stairs to his pad, putting them on the floor, and repeating. The last trip was the worst; one of the boxes ripped open and cards went everywhere. Once Jay noticed that a few of these were “rare”, he went crazy.
Here's the image. Two grown men. In 95-degree heat. On their hands and knees, in a parking lot, on scorching asphalt, manically digging cards off the ground as fast they could, lest “Forest of Dread” or “Magic Dungball Summon” melt.
We both had to change clothes and shower after that. Jay sweat at least five pounds of body weight. For about three months afterwords, I'd randomly find a magic card under the drivers' seat, in the glovebox, wedged in the gear shifter.
The fact he's once again amassed such an army, nay, and armada, of these things scares me. Beware, Janice! He's CRAZY! Don't let them suck you in with their silly card games. Do something healthy, like play “Final Fantasy X” for 300+ hours. :)
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