A Pokemon Story

Mouse, my 14-almost-15-year-old daughter, loves Pokemon. She has since she was 7. She likes to play and doesn't care what others think about it. Her confidence often has others around her finding cool stuff about pokemon too. You know how it goes, if a cool person likes something then it must be cool, right? Anyway, she decided to enter this nationwide contest. First she had to qualify. There was an online quiz. Only 64 people per city are chosen in her age group. If she would have won she would have gone to NYC to compete in another contest. Then if that one was successful off to Japan for a world wide competition.

This is how it went. She qualified. That in itself was amazing to me. I found out that she was in a group called "13 and up" and anyone could enter. You didn't have to live in KC. So Mr. Daphnewood drives her over to the Missouri side for this contest. He said it was like a Star Trek convention where everyone was dressed up like Spock or Klingons but in this case Pikachu and Japanese anime characters. There were no children present. My daughter was the youngest. Wait, not true. There were 2 other kids but they were there to cheer on their father who had entered the contest.

So Mouse draws her competitor. He was 38 and flew in from another city to compete. 38 freakin years old! He doesn't work. He plays Pokemon all day! All of those people were like this. How my daughter qualified in the first place I will never understand. Of course she lost. She gave him a good run for his money but in the end couldn't compete with someone who had so much time to build up his pokemon. Some other over 30 person won the whole competition but I was livid. Why on earth would they match up kids with adults? I have been so mad about this for a week. I am just now able to write about it. We have been telling her that it is not a good thing to only play video games. But who gets rewarded in instances like this? The wacked out weirdo who takes delight in walloping children. Mr. Daphnewood said the guy was nice and felt bad about beating her but I still think kids and adults should not be in the same category.