Something interesting happened to me at my weekly Boy Scout meeting. I challenged one of the kids in the troop to a pokémon battle next Friday. I heard him boasting to the other kids how he was undefeated in his school and how he has a Darkrai and Arceus. I must admit, I was filled with petty anger at his arrogance. I was even close to getting involved in a debate about the legitimacy of the Darkrai and Arceus he boasted of having.
But Instead, I politely asked him if he wanted to battle. At this time, a couple of his evil underlings gathered and began telling me how dead I was going to be and how many level 100s he had. In the kid’s defense, he accepted the challenge gracefully, without so much as a boast to my face. Though after I left, I overheard him plotting what kind of awesome tricks he had in store for me.
I’ve never scheduled a battle before. It’s different because I have an idea of what I’ll be fighting in advance and can take measures against it. Or perhaps I should just stick with my team as is. In any case, the troop is abuzz about the battle and I like to see that.
Before you chide me about challenging a kid to a game like this, I might remind anyone reading this that in the several battles I had with the listeners of our podcast, I was bested nearly every time with sound strategy and frightfully close results. Truly, the beauty of pokémon is that anybody can pick it up and achieve mastery if they try hard enough.
