My most prized childhood possession

Pokémon defined my elementary school experience. I would watch every new episode as it aired live on Cartoon Network, re-watch the few movies they had, and even draw sketches of Pokémon such as Pikachu and Piplup. But during my “phase” I was most obsessed with the trading cards. Although there is a game to these cards, I mainly enjoyed the trading aspect of these cards. I wanted as many high leveled cards as I possibly could get my hands on, and my school was the perfect environment to achieve this goal. I had one main goal before I graduated from elementary school: trade up from a few cards that I bought at Walmart to a Zoroark–a jumbo promo card that was only sold during the premiere of Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions–that one of my classmates possessed.

I brought my Pokémon trading cards to school every day to trade with the other kids. Almost a third of the student body had Pokémon cards, and because of this, everyone was constantly focused on all the deals and trades they could make. This led to a big distraction to schoolwork, and the administration thought it would be necessary to impose some rules: If anyone was caught trading Pokémon cards during class their cards would be taken away from them. Recess changed from that day on. Instead of running around and playing on the monkey bars, we’d all huddle around with our trading cards offering cards we wished to trade. Accordingly, the administration made a slight adjustment to their previous rule: If anyone was caught trading Pokémon cards on school grounds, they would have a special disciplinary meeting with the principle in addition to their previous rule.

Trading Pokémon cards at school almost became like dealing drugs. But this didn’t stop me. We took this seriously. We could not get caught. Desperate circumstances called for extreme measures. I would talk with others about potential deals as we pretended to play during recess like the school administration wanted us to, and when the time came, we’d make the trade at our “secret base”: a rock-climbing wall that caved in with just enough room for two people to be completely hidden.

I remember doing very scummy things (which I do not endorse) to get the Pokémon cards that I wanted, such as forging Pokémon cards by printing the image of a rare card onto one of my cards that no-one wanted. In the height of my trading career, I was stacked with multiple high leveled cards and finally struck a deal for a Zoroark. It was quite the deal; I had to deal a majority of my rare cards to set the trade. When I have finally achieved my goal of having a Zoroark for myself, I began to lose my high for trading. I traded my cards outside of Pokémon cards, with the most notable being an iPod touch, Nintendo DS, or just cold hard cash. Although I have certainly outgrown trading Pokémon cards in its entirety, I still keep my most prized possession with me; a symbol of my elementary school days:

 

Currently being sold on eBay at a price ranging from 50 to 150 dollars.

"You don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone."

My family and I recently dropped my brother off to college just 5 days ago. From riding back home with an empty seat to sleeping with an empty bed beside me, a part of me just feels “off”, and at the moment, that's really the best I can describe it. 

My relationship with my brother has been fairly close. At home, we’d usually chill in the basement, talking about whatever was on our minds. For dinner, you'll usually find us sitting at the dinner table together, sharing stories about our day while enjoying our warm, freshly cooked meals just as any other "normal" family would. We also had our desks downstairs as well as our beds in the same room, so you could say we spent an abnormal amount of time near each other.

At times, I'd sometimes find myself staring at the basement stairs, unconsciously wishing for him to walk down. Or staring at his bed as I lay in bed, as talking to each other was routine before we slept. "You don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone." We all have heard this cliché adage told to us many times by our good old life-teaching parents. As many times as it has been told to me, it'd always go in through one ear and straight out the other. But now, I really do understand what it means. As much as I truly don't want to admit it, only now do I realize missing the company of my brother. It's almost as if these brews of emotions coerced me into creating this recognition from suddenly being cut off after my whole life of being in close contact with him. I suppose everyone experiences this feeling at least 1 time in their life. 

Most of the time we are so caught up in our busy lives that we don't have the chance to step back and think about what we appreciate in life. I know, I know, first world problems, especially considering this example is fairly mild to more serious topics, but I think something we often don’t appreciate until we lose it. Yet at that point, it'll already be too late...