The Pokemon Betrayal

Hambones came to me the other night long after bedtime; he was visibly distraught, and so in a rare moment of empathy, I sat himon my lap and asked if he was OK.  After skirting around the issue for a while, he eventually took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and advised me that I was going to be angry about what he was about to say.

It seems that one lunch time, a week before (he’d been hanging onto this for a while), he’d offered to assist a teacher with some task or other up in the library, but didn’t know what to do with his most prized tin of Pokemon cards, which has been his obsession for months.  He couldn’t think of anywhere safe to put them, so he opted for the collection of school Lost Property under the main stairs, and he sunk the tin deep down under a pile of festering jumpers and odd socks.

He went and did the task and of course, on his return to the Lost Property, some skanky little brat had knicked the entire Pokemon stash.  Little Bastards!

Poor Hambones had been gutted with grief at this loss, but, it seems, considerably more distraught at what his grumpy father might say when he found out.  Needless to say I was kind, and placating on this occasion, and deeply affected by poor Hambones raw, emotional injury.

And now I am reflecting on the irony of it all; Hambones’ fatal decision to hide the cards in Lost Property, rather than to exercise any of the other dozen or so options available to him (to take them with him, to ask a friend to hold them, to ask a teacher to hold them, to run them up to his schoolbag…) was so illogical, and yet exactly what a seven year old kid, intent on trying to help someone and to get to it as quickly as possible would do … it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have done when I was seven.  Poor Hambones.