I'm That Mom

I was that mom today.

As we started off to co-op this morning, we noticed that the corner store, which was last, briefly, an E-bay store, has a new sign out. A very nice sign, which reads "Wizards Reign Hobbies and Games." Now that is a business no one's tried there yet, and it seemed like it might be interesting! Coming back home after co-op and piano (and a very entertaining visit to the brand new Sheetz) we saw that there was an "open" sign, so we stopped in to see what sort of Hobbies and Games our new corner store is offering.

They sell trading cards*! Magic the Gathering, which the kids have never collected, but on Thursday they expect to get in Yu Gi Oh cards! Travis collects those (though he hasn't for the last few years), and the very pleasant gentlemen behind the counter told us that they have plans to have regular Yu Gi Oh tournaments! This is the point where I became Embarrassing Mom. Our good friends in co-op who were going to move, then weren't going to move, have decided that they will definitely be moving to Raleigh at the end of this school year. Woe. Which will leave Travis on the lurch, friend-wise. Hearing about the Yu Gi Oh thing, my first thought was "Travis might meet new potential friends at that sort of event!" I asked about the ages, generally speaking, of Yu Gi Oh players, and I thought the answer seemed hopeful. So...

as soon as we got home I told Ed that he needed to visit the store and buy something! Just a little pack of cards... just in case the fellows needed encouragement on their first day, or in case they might not have had many sales so far! Ed did, and he agreed that the guys seem really nice, and that we would like it if their business succeeds! And he bought a little pack of cards...

... and they gave him a huge stack of free cards along with the little fifteen-card pack he bought! I meant well, but, judging by the amount of stock I saw in the case, we've now practically cleaned them out! Of course, I don't know anything about the game, but I've claimed the card on the upper left of the photo for myself -- "Curse of the Bloody Tome!" The description at the bottom reads, "After seeing his life's work drip away, the mage decided it was a good time to go crazy." That one, combined with the card beside it, Demolish, pretty well expresses my state of mind in co-op today when I started in on our discussion of Oedipus the King and the boys (not Travis) tried to tell me that it was about Oedipus killing the Sphinx. I sweetly and calmly asked if they'd actually read Oedipus the King. Well, no. They hadn't read it. They'd listened to a recording, but it wasn't a good recording and they couldn't understand the words, so they didn't really have any idea of what happens in Oedipus. My life's work is clearly dripping away, and going crazy seemed like an option. But then I decided just to move on to the papers on direct democracy vs representative democracy. Sigh. They really did miss out -- Oedipus was awesome, in a horrific way (and Antigone, which I'm reading for my own amusement, is pretty great so far also!).

*They also sell really lovely model train things!