Paw Patrol Forever

I was at the drug store today and automatically wandered down the toy aisle, in the same manner that whenever I’m in my car it automatically turns toward the grocery store whether I wanted to go there or not. Although I didn’t happen to have a child in the toy aisle with me this time, which was really helpful to my sanity, I still stopped to consider a Paw Patrol toy. But things change!

I sadly put Paw Patrol back on the shelf, since no one in the current kid demographic of the family likes Paw Patrol anymore. It used to be so easy – anything with some reference to a Paw Patrol character was an automatic win. There was a time when pretty much everything around me was in some manner related to Paw Patrol: we had Paw Patrol birthdays, Paw Patrol sheets, Paw Patrol backpacks. I liked Paw Patrol. Now it’s Pokemon, which I don’t like nearly as well.

Apparently Pokemon cards are big business on the playground at recess, and the nine-year-old has entrepreneurial aspirations. He appointed me his consultant, since I was willing to buy him Pokemon cards online. He was incredulous and disappointed that I didn’t know my (any) Pokemon lore, so I had to level up pretty quickly. I spent several hours going through approximately one million Pokemon cards with him until I could identify at least the main ones. I’ve been informed, however, that I’m still seriously lacking in the ability to remember the attributes of each one. This seems to be a significant character defect on my part.

By the way, there is a truly appalling number of websites dedicated to categorizing and selling Pokemon cards. I know, because we had to look through all of them. It was a good bonding experience for us, though. We had a great ethics discussion when I told him he couldn’t represent a fake gold card as a real one in order to sell it for five dollars, instead of the twenty-five cents it was actually worth. His argument was that if he told his friend the card was a fake gold card, his friend wouldn’t give him five dollars for it. So, it looks like we still have a way to go in the ethics area.

Thank goodness everyone still likes Spongebob.