My father was finishing a college program while I was enthralled in Pokémania, and occasionally he would bring me to the public library while he studied. It was a big library with several floors and function rooms and was the largest building I had ever been allowed to explore freely at that age. I was not much of a reader, but it was still very stimulating to be in a quiet and safe space stuffed to the brim with books and computers that I got to walk around by myself for hours. I only got to do this a few times but the memory really sticks with me.
On one of my adventures I wandered into a youth-oriented room with a media center section with big tables. People could use these tables to read or play tabletop games, although I only ever saw people using them one time. That one time involved two older boys playing Pokémon.
I had never actually played the TCG myself, but I was familiar with its basic functions because of the Game Boy TCG game that I liked a lot. Seeing some older kids with the cards all laid out and in active play was novel for me though, so I tried to watch them over a book shelf and hoped they didn’t notice me. I was probably not hidden at all and was leering in plain sight, but they did me the courtesy of ignoring me.
One of the boys was taking the game very seriously but the other boy was not. I got the feeling they’d been playing for some time and the first boy was frustrated and the second boy was just over it. The second boy, always grinning, kept trying to “evolve Abra into Mewtwo.”
“You can’t do that,” the first boy would insist. The second boy, plainly, would again indicate that he was going to evolve his Abra into Mewtwo.
“Abra does not evolve into Mewtwo,” the first boy would fruitlessly argue. The second boy would clarify that his Abra had in fact just evolved in to Mewtwo.
“Just play Mewtwo if you want to play Mewtwo,” the first boy would appeal. The second boy, unshaken, would explain that he was ready to play Mewtwo, as his Abra had just evolved.
I found this utterly and impossibly hysterical. The effortless antagonizing attitude of the second boy against the first boy who insisted he play by the rules was inspiring to me. It would be a decade before the word trolling entered my vocabulary. This library troll was ahead of his time.
After some tense negotiation the second boy rearranged his cards and the game continued. Mewtwo was in play legally. The game progressed for a couple of turns when the second boy, without actual justification, played Scoop Up to return Mewtwo to his hand. He then played Abra and once again placed Mewtwo on top, “evolving his Abra in to Mewtwo.”
The first boy absolutely lost it, but had to keep his voice down in the library. Watching this boy attempt to scold and intimidate the other while trying to remain hushed was an outlandish display. You CANNOT evolve Abra in to Mewtwo. Abra does NOT evolve Abra in to Mewtwo. Play it RIGHT. And the second boy just smiled and smiled and smiled and did not yield. At peak outrage, my father found me and it was time to go home. I’ll never know how it all ended. But I will never forget how such a simple refusal to cooperate produced such a hysterical response between those two boys.
Every time I see Rocket Abra, I think confidently to myself: ah, yes, Rocket Abra. This card evolves in to Mewtwo. And in my heart I even believe it.