The Warm Fuzzies 01: Pogs
I frustrate my wife. Admittedly, she puts up with a lot. But she knew about my frequent nostalgia binges from the get-go, and married life hasn’t exactly changed that. (How many of my classic video games are on display in our living room? If you answered, “all of them,” give yourself a gold star.)
Pog has become a bit of a dirty word in our household recently. Not that I have any particular longings for what are essentially the demon token-spawn of Hawaiian tradition and shameless marketing vehicles. It’s just that, for a brief moment in time, these fanciful cardboard discs were it. I’m talking epic stuff here: Happy Meal promotions, in-school bans, tournaments, even a World Pog Federation. I’m pretty sure I still know the Mid-Atlantic Regional WPF champion…
And I can’t help myself.
So there we were, perusing the wares of Thrift Store USA, when I happened upon this:
Yea, I know. Awesome.
At least, I thought it was awesome. Mindy thought I was crazy. Her logic held—I resisted the charms of the unbelievably well-preserved Pog game. But when I returned to the same store just days later, the game had been marked down to $2.50.
Seriously? $2.50?!
Now how to explain it to Mindy…a text message? An overly evasive text message? OK, I can do this…
“Hey. I really love you.”
That should do it. Soften her up a bit.
Mindy: ”I love you, too. Wait, you bought that Pog game, didn’t you?”
She’s good.
And so we reluctantly welcomed Pog Man into our home. He lives in the closet with our other board games. I can see him from the couch where I occasionally sleep.
Tyler
PS: Do you remember these? Wanna play? Leave a comment.
PPS: How cool would it be if you had one of these?
