We admins/mods have been lying to you all along.

[Luna]

I...  I still have a couple slammers around the house, just in case...

You never know, really, do you?

Really, I just kept them because they were pretty...  I don't really NEED them...

^{One of them lights up and sparkles when you use it...}

[Jenne]

I...  I still have a couple slammers around the house, just in case...

You never know, really, do you?

Really, I just kept them because they were pretty...  I don't really NEED them...

^{One of them lights up and sparkles when you use it...}

The first step, Luna, is just to admit you have a problem.  You need to give your emergency stash to someone you trust to get rid of it, legally, for you.  (Clearly, this does NOT include Richter...)

And be careful about the company you keep--you can fall into bad habits easily.  You don't need the kind of "friends" that allow you to "use" again.  They should know you can't handle even ONE hit.

Also, make an appointment with your doctor.  Let him/her know that you are having a hard time fighting this urge.  They might have something you can take to take the edge off.

[Eater of Clowns]

After a while things changed.  A lot of people grew out of pogs, I've heard.  A lot of others just grew bored with them, forgot them once the craze died down.  Heh, I envy the innocent.  Our change didn't come from time.  It came from the guy with the razor slammers.

Our little regular group stopped getting together.  Not just for pogs, either, really entirely.  Couldn't even meet one another's gaze in the schoolyard.  Mikey was the first to go, now that I think about it.  He didn't show up to do pogs one day, and this is when we just did it because it's what we did, not out of any sense of sport or fun.  Anyway Mikey was at home.  His mom gave me the whole "can't come out to play" routine but I knew what was up.  I walked around the back and looked into his window.  It looked like he was trying to clean his room or something, but every time he came upon something disc shaped, he stopped and stared for a minute, then calmly put it down and tried to move onto something else.  Coins, soda caps, at one point he was all fucked up by the little paper rounds left by hole punches.  He turned out okay in the long run, I hear, some kind of doctor.  I was happy to hear that.

Danny is one of those guys that shapes the events in a positive light.  He's an advocate now, got himself a social work degree and everything, and he specializes in cases like ours.  When I ran into him at the supermarket the other week and found this out, he was holding a box of Ritz crackers.  I was walking by and he became suddenly very interested in the nutrition label.  Didn't say a goddamn word.

Eric.  Shit, Eric was the star of the show back then.  He had this flick of the wrist that would send your pogs flying.  Thing of beauty, it was, real talented kid.  We were glad to have him around, but I think we all knew he wasn't going to be in our little group for long with the kind of ability he had.  He turned out the worst.  Had the hardest to fall, I guess.  I never had the nerve to see him again but the stories tell themselves.  Turned into what he hated.  Went from game to game, sniffing them out on the wind like prey, toting some kind of homemade slammer he'd been working on.  Just mutilated the pogs from that point onward, his considerable skill gone totally awry.  I wonder if he ever got out of it.

Me, I'm done, you know, moved on.  Still have my moments, of course, like anybody.  I'll be rummaging through the old junk drawer and a little metal disk will slip into my hand, the weight still familiar after all these years.  Danny and Mikey and Eric flood back into vision, just some kids with a hobby.  Gotta drop that thing shortly after, shut that drawer up tight.

Hell of a fucking thing though, pogs.

[Don Coyote]

WUT? I never understood pogs. I must be one of the lucky ones.

[Luna]

Once the pogs faded, it was the Magic cards.

I swear, I thought I'd gotten rid of them all.

I found a stash last night in one of the boxes we moved last Saturday.

[Jenne]

Once the pogs faded, it was the Magic cards.

I swear, I thought I'd gotten rid of them all.

I found a stash last night in one of the boxes we moved last Saturday.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, this thread certainly went farther than I'd hoped.

Richter & EOC are GOLD when you can get them to jabber.  Luna & Jenne are a nice surprise as well.

Incidentally, why am I the only one that has Elder God Pogs?  I thought everyone did.

[Jenne]

Rog, 1) I think you're the only one with Level 4 clearance. 2) I think you might be the only one that would ADMIT PUBLICLY to such largesse...  3)  I think we need to introduce you to Luna's social worker. 4) Be careful with those, they have unknown powers. 5) Keep them away from EoC, he's clean.

[LMNO]

This thread is now in the top 5 threads for 2011.

[Richter]

I had to trim this down a lot, from my original story.  It's been a long, strange road, and a lot of it is disturbing.  I've done things over the years I'm not proud of, and things that would come off wrong, to those who just don', who CAN'T know the world of pogs.

I was the worst in high school. 

It wasn't the "thing" then either.  The craze was already over, and there were just a few of us, in it for sheer love of the pogs that held on.

The regular games were suppressed pretty quick.  No more keepsies at the lunchroom table, or out in the courtyard between classes.  A hurried strike or two, just to keep you going for the next class. 

We caught hell for it.  Not just from the teachers, who tried to bring the craze in, make it safe.  There was the after school "Pogs Club", the no-keepsies, sanctioned matches.  Boring.  It was just piling up one person's stack, and seeing how many alternating turns could take down.  No thrill, no taking. 

The other students were the worst.  Hell, I figure one in ten was a user, but you'd get teased and bullied for it like nothing else.  Hah.  Watch that big fucker from the football team locker slam you one minute, then nearly break down crying when you drop his stack in a shot later.

The best matches were the underground ones.  The detention room bouts where you have to sin just to get in to play.  A quick stack and throw between stern glances of the school discipline officer.  I kept metal under my tongue for those, some kind of obscure coin for Charon.  It was a well used aluminum striker.  Not as much weight as a steel, or an epoxy and ball bearing homebrew, but perfect for a quick throw.  Light enough to hit maximum speed when you can't do a full arm motion for fear of attracting attention.  It was my favorite. 

Not that I was ever THAT hardcore about it, mind.  Some of the really twisted ones, they'd smuggle in slammers up their ass.  Had to watch you matches with them, one throw, and it might not be worth winning the pogs.  Strictly bragging rights and clever negotiation over who went first.  Those slammer packers were an odd breed all right.  I half respected them for the lengths they'd go to, half reviled them.  It had to be about the pogs too, right, and they were making them un – useable.  Forever soiling what they loved just out of chance of a competitive edge.  There's a lesson about people in that.

I had to quit before I went to college though.  Didn't want to be "That pog guy" anymore.  I wanted to start over away from that pseudo childish shame, and I did, in a school three states away.  Those were goo years, fucking halcyon years.

I graduated, and I got this summer camp job, a holdover as I looked for more real world employ.  They do their background checks, and got nothing.  Of course they got nothing.  It was all before I was 18, and even then coach put in a word for me with the judge so nothing hit my paper.  Almost didn't get FAFSA over that shit...

So yeah, I'm at the camp.  The first day, the fist FUCKING day, there the kids are, lining up a stack.  Some kind of retro trend resurfacing.  Some were ragging on them, but the ones playing there, they knew what they liked. 

I went over and told the haters to bug off, then asked if I could take a throw.  They just nodded, all thrilled that not only could they play, but that a counselor was into their game too.  Still had that old metal striker under my tongue too, old habits die hard, huh? 

I take my shot, look up, and the fucking camp preacher's walking by.  He somewhere between delighted smile at me participating and playing with the kids, setting a good adult example, and sheer revulsion over what we were doing.  Was I just trying to help some kids being bullied, or was this some darker urge, leading his flock astray?  Had he hired a wolf in sheep's clothing?

I still don't fucking know.  I don't remember that summer much either.

I woke up in the tattered remains of my red staff shirt and a big pair of jean pipe shorts up a nature trail in late September.  Camp was LONG over, and I'd been slamming piles out in the bush solo.  Sad and alone in the absence of any other players, who were now all long gone back to their schoolbooks. 

I pulled my ass out and got my life back together.  My old aluminum was missing, but in it's place I had the heavy wood one.  Woodburned lovingly "For Councilor Richter", signed with initials of campers I barely remember, and messily sealed with a load of shellac still bearing a few childish fingerprints.

Damn I hope, wherever they are, that they're OK

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sweet mother of Jesus.   

[Luna]

Damn, Richter.

[bugmenоt]

I had them too in my childhood.

But where I live we call it syphilis.

[Jenne]

Richter, the early years, when he just let go of the spincter...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Richter, the early years, when he just let go of the spincter...

You'll note that he isn't talking about The Incident.  It was a fucking mess, and it was all the school board could do to keep it out of the papers.  Today, of course, he'd have been booked on terrorist charges and taken away...The "Final Solution" Pog was utterly uncalled for, and yet another reason we can't have nice things.