Games of the 90's

Do you remember Pogs?

Random, I know. But strangely, I remember them quite clearly. For those of you whose foggy noggins are struggling to recall the memory of that particular 90's fad, let me help:

It's a game played with colorful milk cap-type pieces. Players would contribute a determined number of discs ("pogs") to a pile. They would stack all the pogs one-on-top-of-another all facing down. Then they would take turns trying to turn the most number of pogs face up by bouncing a heavier game piece (called the "slammer") on top of the stack. The player kept the pogs that landed right side up during their turn and when there were no pogs left, the player with the most won.

I personally didn't play much with the primitive game. When pogs started becoming "the thing", I was in junior high and therefore busy trying to survive by perfecting my invisibility talent and hiding in the paperback worlds of the written word. I did, however, own a few of the colorful discs, mostly thanks to the generosity of my younger brothers. I remember they had a whole bunch of different colored pogs and every once in awhile I'd humor my devoted subjects by sitting and letting them proudly show off their somewhat extensive array of useless milk caps. I was a pretty nice big sister and would try to take interest in the silly things that my brothers were into without making them feel that I thought they were silly or childish and they loved me so much that they drank up any attention I would give them. Every now and then, one of the boys would end up with a pog that would capture my eye because it was sparkly, or pink, or had the cutest kitten with big blue eyes on it. All I had to do was show a little affection for that particular pog and it was instantly offered by my idolizing little brother and added to my reluctant collection of "cute" and "girly" pogs they probably didn't want in the first place.

(So I failed in my duty as big sister in causing physical pain to my younger sibs at every possible opportunity in order to keep them from growing up into wimps, but I did discover the knack for getting what I want with the right amount of charm and sweetness. And they grew up tough enough, even without a daily beating from their big sis, so it's all good. . .)

I know what you are thinking: "that's an interesting little story, but where did this sudden flash of 90's nostalgia come from?"

Yeah, I wondered the same thing Monday night when out of the blue I heard the word "pogs" and was suddenly showered with memories of a toy I had long ago forgotten about.

It was after class. A few of us were left in the classroom, some just chattering for the sake of making vocal noise and some gathering up our stuff and trying to clear our heads of the morbid tales we had just finished discussing. The instructor was putting his stuff away and listening politely to the random chatter trying to make itself heard. I was tuning out the distracting noise and searching my brain for the hole that leaked out my most recently learned word, the Finnish word for umbrella (I found it eventually: sateenvarjo) when I heard the word that brought me back into the room. How the conversation got on the old toy from the 90's is beyond me, but suddenly I was aware of the conversation going on around me.

"I was only 5 when they were popular, so I didn't get them," announced the girl to my left.

"I remember going on vacation and all the kids in town had them," said the guy who always sits in the back of the room. "So I bought some and was excited to take them to school with me, but when I got there, everyone already had them. I was amazed at how suddenly they appeared."

My instructor chuckled at the memory of them. "I remember them, but I don't get them," he said. "I mean, I understand collecting baseball cards. And I can even kind of understand collecting those Magic cards because there's a game of some kind to go with it. But those milk cap things. . ."

"Well, there's a game to Pogs," I piped in. Sure, I didn't play them, but remember I had little brothers who did, so I understood perfectly well what they were and how they worked. I figured it would help to relate them to something closer to his generation. "It's kind of like playing marbles. You collect your set, you play against someone else and their set, and you keep the ones you win."

My instructor seemed satisfied with my explanation, but the girl to my left looked baffled. She glanced at me and then over at the instructor. "You old people and your games. . ."

Really???