The Once and Future Pogster

Before college taught me how not to be fit I used to participated in my share of sports. Baseball to hockey, skiing to beach volleyball, I enjoyed them all, and walked away with my share of trophies and ribbons. I should note the latter of which were for such things as track and swimming, I’m not talking about the blue ribbon for best piece of cheese in the county fair. I don’t really know how you measure the quality of a piece of cheese, I imagine that if we dug deeper it’d all be a payola scam, but who wants to tarnish the beauty of a bunch of forty year old men in overalls competing over Gouda?

I digress.

Sports were a part of my life growing up, I enjoyed them and dreamed of one day being an Olympian or a professional baseball player, yet one by one I left each athletic venture for one reason or another. Life got busy, my skills peaked, or in the case of football the line for equipment was taking to long.

There was one sport though whose departure was sudden and unexpected. I was faced with a choice between it and my family’s happiness. A difficult choice at any age, least to a child. That sport? Pogs.

Okay, okay hold up, before you stop reading, I recognize that Pogs are not regarded as a sport but as a fad, despite the fact it involves about the same amount of muscles as driving a car around a track.

Pogs began in the early 1930s as a game played with milk caps down in Hawaii (probably what the geeky kids did on shore while everyone else was surfing). The idea was that both players started with their own set of milk caps (aka Pogs) and a larger, heavier Pog known as a slammer. With all the Pogs face down each player takes a turn throwing his or her slammer at the pile of Pogs, winning each one that flipped face up. At the end of the game when there are no more Pogs to flip, whoever had scored the most face up was the winner.

Though originating some five decades earlier, Pogs did not become a fad until the 1990s, when companies realized they could sell small pieces of cardboard to children at five hundred times the price of a circle of cardboard.

My rise in the ‘sport’ of Pogs came unexpectedly. Like most kids I enjoyed playing with them almost as much as I enjoyed buying them. Then one day I entered a tournament with a friend, and like a young Wayne Gretzky I burst onto the scene out of nowhere, bringing with me my own style that defeated opponent after opponent… right, sorry, I had to pause there for a second and remind myself I was talking about lamented paper.

Then it happened, a letter in the mail inviting me to the championship match, in a few short wins I could be crowned Pog Champion, my moment had come. Fame and girls would follow.

It was somewhere in the midst of these fantasies that my family informed me we were supposed to be on vacation that week, but not wanting to get in the way of my future Olympic Pogster aspirations they would skip the trip for me.

I now had a decision to make. Here’s how it played out in…

My Imagination

A young Derek Robertson steps to the podium, the press looking on as he taps the microphone in front of him. Somewhere backstage a sound man shudders.

“I’d like to make a brief statement. I am officially and regretfully stepping down before the championship match of Pogs.”

The crowd reacts in a murmur of shock, flashbulbs begin to pop. Derek raises his hands for silence and the room listens.

“I’ll miss the sound of slammer hitting Pog, the roar of the four or five people in the crowd. But ladies and gentlemen I stand before you today and say I will be back! For as long as people are collecting Beanie Babies, as long as they are still dancing the Macarena, Pogs will live on!”

A reporter raises a hand.

“Mr. Robertson, Melvin Artledge, ESPN 2, what prompted your unexpected leave mere weeks before the Pog championship?”

“It wasn’t an easy decision Melvin, but in the end I look forward to dedicating more time to my family, and to the crush I have on that girl who plays Alex Mack. Also as some of you know I was recently awarded duel custody of a Tamagotchi digital pet and I look forward to spending more time with her… or him, not quite sure, those pixels are pretty small.”

“Mr. Robertson, Mr. Robertson, over here, Zack Boyd, TSN. What about the rumours that this sudden departure from the game is over claims of an irregular, possibly illegal slamming style?”

“Listen, Zack is it? These baseless claims have been dogging me since I first began tournament play. No ref has ever called me on it, nobody has proven any misdeed, to think I’d step down now, because of that…”

Derek begins a manly, sports-hero-at-the-end-of-his-career cry.

“I’m, I’m… No more questions.” Quickly Derek leaves the stage as reporters shout after him, the flashbulbs again going off.

And here’s how it played out in…

Reality

“I guess I’ll skip the championship, maybe I’ll do it again next year?” I said.

“Okay,” said my mum.

Little did I know that several schools across North America, Australia and England would begin banning the game for fear of children gambling. This would lead to a domino effect that saw a Hawaiian milk company fear negative association with teaching kids to gamble, and in response they launched lawsuits at any company using the name Pog. Before long it was all over, the fad, and with it my chances of one day being crowned Pog champion.

I still have my Pogs tucked away in a box somewhere, waiting to one day be dusted off, reeking of that trademark basement/attic smell as I show my future children. I’ll tell them the story of my run at Pog championship, perhaps getting a little misty eyed at glory days gone by.

“I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender…”

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