Human Rule Machine

The Slademan came to visit recently, carrying a deck of cards in his hand.
"Hey, Tammy," he greeted me. "Want to play a game of cards with me?"

Cards, I thought, innocently unsuspecting. I loved to play card games when I was a kid! Slap Jack, Books, Crazy 8's. Those were some fun games.
"Sure, I'll play with you! I used to love card games," I bragged. "I was really good at Slap Jack. Do you want to shuffle or do you want me to?"
He gazed calmly at me, something akin to pity in his eyes.
"Well," he explained patiently, palm upturned. "This is Pokemon. We don't shuffle a lot in Pokemon. Do you know how to play?"
Do I know how to play? It's a card game! And isn't Pokemon the name of a cartoon? How hard could it be? I say, I say, don't patronize me, son! I could handle this with one hand tied behind my back, especially with no shuffling!
"Let's play!" I said.

He whipped out a deck of cards, several inches tall. He gave a few, extremely sparse instructions and doled out cards to each of us.

"OK," he offered politely. "I'll let you attack first."
Attack?
"We're playing cards, right?"
"Well, technically, we're playing Pokemon," he explained. "But it's played with cards."
I looked carefully at my cards. Each card was encrusted with instructions, facts, codes, symbols, and various numbers.
"How do I know which card to play?" I was truly puzzled. "And how do I play it?"
"Well, why don't you start by just laying down two cards, any cards."
I threw down two cards.
He studied his own pile of cards, poring over each one carefully.
"Well, since that attack doesn't do much to me, I'm going to call out one of my attacks." More studying. He pushed my card back at me. "C shot. This one will have to retreat because my attacks are both two and three."
What the.....?

"OK, now choose two more cards," he instructed.
I chose two more and threw them down blindly.
He reached over and pushed one back at me.
"No, this one is an energy. Pick two Pokemons." He held up two fingers, like it was the number I was having trouble with. "Two," he repeated helpfully.
I tossed another card into the ring.
"OK, you have Ponita and Tuna." At least, it sounded like Tuna. It was far too early in the game to begin asking stupid questions.
Slade looked up at me quizzically and asked, "Which one is going to be your base attacker?"
He continue to stare at me, as if I could give him a reasonable answer. I stared back mutely. Finally, he took pity and pointed to the one on the left.
"This is the one that guards." Something in his voice said that guarding would be a good idea.
"Yeah, I choose this one, this guarding guy."

"OK. To make a move you can use two energies to use one jump or one energy to use sniff-out."
I closed my eyes and pointed at something.
"OK. So you use sniff-out. So flip a coin."
He magically produced a coin from his pocket, which I obediently flipped.
"OK, heads," he interpreted. "So you pick up two cards from your discard pile and you can keep one."
I put one card back into my line-up.
"Now it's my turn to attack," he informed me. He looked my cards over. "Sorry, but both your guys retreat again. All of them."
"All of these?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes, well, if your attack had two things, like lunge-out or guilty, I would have retreated, but you didn't use those attacks," he explained.
"OK, so what do I do?"
He pushed three of my cards across the table.
"All three of these have to retreat. Oh, and after you use an energy, you have to discard it too." He threw another of my cards on the discard pile. "So pick some more Pokemons."

I threw more cards on the table.
"Ok, so you have Electrode and that hard name. Mag..nem...di...con.. something."
My cards seem to have no effect on him. He was indestructible. He played again. More retreating on my side.
Finally, it was my turn to attack again. According to him, I somehow managed to do 30 damage to his card. He whipped out pencil and paper and pushed it toward me.
"Write down minus 30 to D___clop. Do you need that spelled for you?"
I pushed the paper back. "Why don't you just keep score?"
After some furious scribbling, he played again.

What followed was a confusing, intricate array of swifts, power-ups, energies, pokebodies, low currents, coin-flips, power-damages, discards, attacks, and retreats. There was benching, evolving, and breath-freezing. Some cards were asleep, confused, paralyzed, or poisoned. I've never seen so many rules in one game! What ever happened to Slap Jack? It was so simple: You see a Jack, you slap it.

"How the heck did you learn all these rules?" I finally asked, exasperated.
His reply was simplicity at its finest.
"I read the rule book."
Oh, of course. The Sacred Rule Book! A light bulb went on in my head and I remembered something I had once read in my Developmental Psychology textbook.

"Eight-year-olds are Human Rule Machines. Playing by the rules, doing things in a particular sequence, ranking things, rating and judging them-- this is a major preoccupation of most children this age, permeating practically everything they do…"

I realized that, at my age, I had no chance of winning against this 8-year-old human rule machine. The only chance at a dignified exit lay in attack, using another 8-year-old developmental stage against him.

....The eight-year old also begins to have a big appetite....

"Hey, I know what!" I exclaimed. "Let’s go get something to eat!"

Oh yeah. I can still do eating!