Pokemon mania

"Mom!"

"What?"

"My Delbert just learned present!"

"Cool."

2 seconds later

"Mom!"

"What?"

"I just evolved my Shiffree!"

"Cool."

2 seconds later than that

"Mom!"

"What?"

"My Meganium just grew a level and it's about to evolve!"

"Cool."

Another few-second lapse

"Mom!"

"What?"

"The door to my hitmotop's heart is about to open!"

"Very cool, buddy!"

And on and on it goes, night and day, sometimes in stereo, sometimes via dueling GameBoys and sometimes on GameCube. It's a sickness, an addiction, an obsession, and a gen-you-eine learning experience. To wit:

• One can only open the door to a shadow pokemon's heart at the relic. Sometimes only with Celebei around or with the time flute.
• You can help a shadow pokemon open its heart just by carrying it around.
• Higher level pokemon are more powerful; level 100 pokemon are almost invincible. Trust me on this one, I know whereof I speak.
• Each area in the game has a different song, each pokemon has its own noise
• Some pokemon can evolve into different pokemon and some can evolve into multiple pokemon depending on what kind of stone or fossil or whatever you have, some pokemon don't evolve at all
• Some Pokemon rare, some are not.
• Some Pokemon are grass, some are electric, some are fire, or earth or whatever other definable property you can think of, some are combination Pokemon (name a random combination of your choice, I'm sure there is one).
• There are hundreds upon hundreds of Pokemon, there are dozens of games, there are endless hours of play available, and my boys are bound and determined to "catch 'em all."

The weird part is that I encourage this behavior, to a degree. Any kid who can understand the intricacies of this pretend world has GOT to be building the ability to organize and create relationships between disparate objects, right? It's helping his memory-building skills, don't you think? It's building hand-eye coordination and sharpening his powers of recall ("fire blast doesn't work on water pokemon, mom!"), correct?

Please say yes. Please.

(In many ways I wish I was a kid so that I could play these games for hours on hours on hours. I don't actively discourage the playing of the games because I was the kid in college who went to the arcade in the student union and drank beer and played "Galaga" or "Tempest" until my eyeballs dried out. I understand the power of the video game. I am also the one who, during telecons, will play "Chuzzle" on action mode for something to do, and be disappointed when I only get to level 10. BTW - The mute-able phone is a great invention! In addition, in order for y'all to understand just how truly dense I am, I am also the one who has just purchased a NEW Pokemon GameCube game for one child for Christmas, and a "35-in-1" teevee game thingie for the other child for the same holiday. The dense part? We have only 1 teevee, which might be a huge problem come Christmas afternoon.)