My Latest Non-Sewing Project is...

Trading cards. Let me explain.

There a crowd of kids at Peter's school who trade Pokemon cards. They seem harmless enough, but something about it bugs me.

Maybe it's the way 15 or 20 kids would rather sit on the cold hard asphalt on a winter day rather than running around playing on the, erm, playground. Or maybe it's the haggling over any given trade or that the kids who have the most cards are usually the ones whose parents have more expendable cash. It could just be my dislike for licenced characters of any sort.

My kids don't watch tv or very many movies. So often they are in the dark a bit when it comes to popular culture stuff like Disneyland and Pokemon. Peter would love to start trading Pokemon cards, but I am hesitant (especially since he can't read and he could easily get ripped off since he has no idea what he is doing or what the entire premise of trading cards is about).

We talked about it on the way home from school a couple of days ago. He knows that Pokemon are licenced characters and that our family doesn't do licenced characters. He also recognizes that he doesn't really know what all is going on with the cards except that there is some fighting between the different characters (this would also not be ok in our house).

As we were talking, and it did get a little heated and emotional at points, Peter spouted out,

"We should make our own trading cards with pictures of our friends and write down what they like to do!"

Well, yes. Yes we should. And not only could we make sets and give them to our friends as gifts, we could play all sorts of card games with the sets of cards - Go Fish and Rummy immediately come to mind.

To this end I have searched for an open source desktop publishing software and have downloaded Scribus. I have been happily fiddling away at this program trying to come up with some card templates.

I love that boy. He's always thinking.

Comments

Keely said…
I love this! Creative problem solving- way to go Peter (and Mom).
Michael said…
So how long before we hear Peter say "I'll trade you a Lucy and a Clara for ... "

GREAT IDEA!!! Love it. And now I know why you want to resize photos. Cropping will also be helpful for you there.
doris sander said…
what a delightfully creative compromise!
Anonymous said…
I love that idea. Which one of your friends or family gets to be the child's equivalent of the Joker? :) We are fighting the war with licensed characters too...Ryan and I choose not to buy anything with that on them, but grandmothers and aunts have a penchant for Dora the Explorer wear that flashes!
Anonymous said…
That is a great idea! And I am curious as to why you don't do anything with licensed characters... not a bad idea at all, I just wonder how you do it in such a media-saturated society. Impressive!

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