The Magic Between Us: it's all in the cards.
<p>When it comes to gaming, I never once sought to make my child in to a gamer, but he saw me having fun and wanted to be a part of it. To be honest, he was the one that brought me back in to gaming. I had put aside my RPG books long ago, mostly due to the fact that my core group of Gamers had all dispersed after high school, and I got married and had a kid when I was 20 (all planned). I was far too busy learning to be a father in the early years to even think about trying to find new people to game with, and after a while it just felt like too much effort.</p>
<p>In that time I had been exposed to Magic several times. The first was by way of my brother-in-law in 1994- he had caught the bug and had tried to get me to play with him, but while I had heard talk of the game I had blown it off as a fad and a money sink. Then my wife and I went on vacation with he Mom and Brother to the San Juan islands, and on the ferry ride over I relented and let her Brother teach me Magic. It was pretty fun, but to be honest my mind was not 100% in the game and it was only the fervor of this kid (I think he was 15 at the time) that kept me playing for the whole vacation. I did not fully understand the game, and shortly after the trip my wife gave birth to R and everything became about him.</p>
<p>The coming years brought more exposure to the game by way of one of my old gaming friends- A had started collecting in college and taught me to play again a few time, but still it did not stick. Then Pokemon happened. On his own my son had caught the Pokemon bug playing with his friends at about age 5 or 6. R wanted me to play with him, so I let him teach me the game using his cards. It was pretty fun for me, and I loved having something I could do with him on his terms. I bought some cards for myself, though more for him, and soon I had a small collection and was making decks myself. While that was going on my buddy, A, had finally gotten magic to stick with me and I started very casually picking up a precon here and there in 2001. I still was not playing any card game seriously, but I was playing a lot more Pokemon with R than I was Magic.</p>
<p>R eventually heard about a new game, he was about seven or eight at the time, that was called Yu-Gi-Oh. He had exposed me to the Anime first, and even though I was a long time Anime fan I could not stand the screaming and goofy posturing of Yu-Gi-Oh. I actually used to like watching Pokemon with R when he was younger, but this new Anime was not for me. By the time R got in to playing the card game, I had pretty much gotten hooked on Magic. I was playing when I could, and casually collecting, but still I did not really try to teach R Magic. He was a very slow starter when it came to learning to read, and while he had memorized all his Yu-gi-oh cards, he still had a lot of trouble with the finer points of new cards. I played a little Yu-gi-oh with him, but never really liked anything about the game (aside from face down trap cards) so I never bought my own cards and only played the game when he really wanted me to.</p>
<p>In 2003 R started to get interested in Magic. His reading had improved and he liked the look of the cards, and was frequently asking me what they did or said. I offered to teach him, but I think the reading aspect made him anxious about it until it became clear the this was a reading exercise he could do with me that was a lot more fun than reading some Goosebumps book. I started by teaching the him the mana system- what mana was as opposed to lands, and this was not as hard as I thought thanks to his experience with Pokemon. He still sometimes reverted to Pokemon rules, but picked it up pretty quickly. Then I made some simple creature decks, as basic creature combat was simple and familiar from other games, and we played a few games with just that.</p>
<p>After he had that down I added in creature pump, land search, and card draw to the decks and we played a few games. He was picking things up pretty quickly, all things considered, but he was young and it took a little time. Finally I added in things like counters, burn, and removal to further understand the stack, and after a few games he was good to go. His reading trouble kept him from experiencing a wide range of cards, as he kept to the ones he knew well, but by the end of that school year his reading skill had increased significantly, and by the start of the next school year (ie over the summer) he was reading at grade level, and that would never had happened if it had not been for Magic and the Pokemon gameboy games. In that time he was not thinking about practicing reading, instead he was just playing in a reading rich environment and he picked it up. After that all the other TCGs went by the wayside. R was playing Magic with me and my adult friends, and eventually his cousin, G, and his friends. G's parents (my Aunt and Uncle) saw how much fun I had playing with G and R, and saw the benefits it had on our relationship, so they asked to be taught the game too. It was pretty great as the five of us had a great time playing taunting each other (all with humor and fun) and it further strengthened family bonds.</p>
<p>In the years to follow I taught many of R's friends to play Magic, and still play with them when I can. As a result I know all of his friends, and they are comfortable around me enough for me to really get to know them. I have way more social contact with R than I would if we had no activities in common, and I have proven to him that I really mean it when I tell him he can tell me anything and I will not get angry*. He is still a 19 year old guy who lives on his own, and there is plenty that he does not share with his old man, but when the rubber meets the road and stuff goes wrong between us we know there is safe neutral ground in the cards that will lead to reconciliation and more talking. It is an unbelievable test of my willpower and resolve to raise R into a good, thoughtful, responsible, and contributing member of society and I cannot even imagine doing that without Magic: the Gathering. We have played RPGs with his friends, and mine, and we play video games together as well, but Magic has been the constant thread that has held us together in rough seas and calm.</p>
<p>After much of his life spent gaming, R is not fat, he is not inactive, and he is not bitter about past mistakes. He has had a couple of stupid trades, but to be honest all of them were because he placed a great value on the card he wanted regardless of the monetary value. Sure, from a monetary perspective he got "screwed" in the trade, but he never cares because he wanted the card in question and ends up having a lot of fun playing it. He does not feel victimized by trade sharks, and looks back at all of it as a positive learning experience. I think that by not allowing your kids to have the independence to do what they want with their possessions you are cheating them out of experiences that shape them as they mature. When R came home when he was younger an told me about this awesome trade he made to get some almost unplayable fattie by trading off his Umezawa's Jitte I was so angry. It was a trade with someone older at the shop that was frequently there, so I could have gone back and menaced the asshat in to at least not doing it again, if not even reversing the trade, but I did not. Not out of some lack of will, because some hulk-esque rage bubbles up from inside when I hear that someone has done something to one of my kids. No, I held back my murderous urges for two reasons: 1) I respected his right make his own mistakes (within reason) and learn from them, and 2) He was stoked about the trade. He had a ton of fun trying to make a deck that would make the best use out of the fatty, had even more fun playing the deck as many times as necessarily to get the fatty out, and was fracken elated when it finally happened and he won by getting me down to something like -21 life. I never saw him have that much fun with Jitte, and frankly he never even cared to use it to it's full potential, but with the new card he was **** of the walk. I told him that the guy had gotten the card that was worth the most money, and that he had kinda taken advantage of him, but he was undeterred and did not care.</p>
<p>Eventually (and sooner than you think) your kids will be out in the world making important decisions for themselves and if they do not have the wisdom that can be taught only by experience then they will just get victimized worse. By sheltering young people you are not keeping them from being taken advantage of, you are just putting it off till a point in life where the stakes are higher. After all, would you rather your kid get cheated out of Sword of Feast and Famine now, or they get cheated out of their savings later on in life. It is a lesson that has to be learned by experience, and cannot be learned by way of talking or teaching. *I am not at all perfect in this regard, but I try very hard.</p>
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 3, 2012