POGS: Gamblers and Bastards

POGS: A SHORT HISTORY OF GAMBLING AND NAIEVTY

PREFACE

         It was the early 90’s; I was in elementary school.  Although I can’t put a specific date on it so many years later, I can still remember how it hit the world like a bombshell.  The POG had arrived.  Now I’m certainly not claiming this was a new invention.  POGS had been around in one form or another since the 20’s or perhaps even earlier, but they didn’t gain world notoriety until the 90’s.  The strange thing was that we (and by we I mean my peers and I) never really understood them the way I do today.  In our age of innocence we were footloose and fancy free. Now many years later I see this phenomenon in an entirely new light.
      Two years into University, and after a couple of courses in psychology, I began to view my POG experience much differently than as a child.  Perhaps I had been indulging in cannabis at the time (which is a distinct possibility) but it finally hit me:  POGS were the perfect social experiment.  A simple set of rules, and some highly desirable playing tokens had in effect, turned children into adults.  At my age, complete innocence had suddenly and without warning been introduced to a form of currency, money in effect; and simultaneously had also been introduced to gambling….the perfect storm.  Now there are a couple of disclaimers that must be stated before I continue any further.  First, I am certainly not taking any credit for coming up with this line of thinking; I have simply made some observations that I’m certain have been made many times before.  And second, I’m also positive this is not the first time this argument could have been made.  Marbles, jacks, the list goes on.  The game has been played many times with any different forms of currency, but I come from the age of the POG so I will speak for my generation.  Now I can continue.  Let me begin with my story.

MY FIRST POGS

        I remember my first set.  My father came home with a couple of small packages, giving them to my brother and I.  Inside the plastic and cardboard....was more….plastic and cardboard, yet millions of times more valuable than its packaging.  I can still see it today, a small red tube filled with perhaps 20 cardboard discs.  Immediately my brother and I ran into the basement to unload our bounties.  Within minutes we were playing our first game…although these premier rounds would still be slathered in naivety.  The winner was the winner, POGS would be returned after the game was over, and everyone would leave happy.  Come on.  How long could that possibly last!?!?!
The next day I arrived at school.  Amazing how the landscape had changed overnight!!  Kids littered the grounds; POGS were everywhere.  I could have probably counted on one hand the amount of my peers who didn’t have a stash.  The school was buzzing.
        Strangely enough most of us still held on to our innocence.  With something so new in your pocket, it was not yet time to lose this bit of happiness.  Games always ended with the return of one’s POGS.  Playing for keeps really didn’t appeal to anyone at this point, as the game was still a novelty.  No one in the mob was quite ready to give up their new found wealth, just as my brother and I had found out the night before.  Rationality reigned, and everyone went home happy.  That was day one.  The next morning when I arrived at school the landscape had changed completely; POGS had taken us in, and now they were ready to do their worst.

WINNER TAKE ALL

         I will begin by referring to my previous question: how long could this possibly last?? One day…..one fucking day is the answer!!
        It started with the “rich” kids (for future reference, when I refer to the rich kids, I am speaking of the kids who had the biggest collections of POGS).  Playing for the fuck of it was already worn out.  The novelty of the game had been unimaginably short, and now it was time to move up one step.  Nothing could match the rush of playing your first game for keeps.  After that, just like a drug addict, we would spend the rest of our POG playing days upping the ante; mercilessly trying to re-live the feeling of that first high.  I will admit, some of us weren’t ready to make the leap quite yet, and by the end of day two the ratio was about 50/50.  By day three, if you weren’t playing for keeps, you weren’t playing at all.
        And so it went.  Although we didn’t realize it, by the third day the entire school was in the fierce grips of a gambling addiction.  Innocence was still alive to some degree, but with every day that followed it would dwindle.  Playing for keeps would become playing for keeps with more than two POGS at a time.  The stacks would grow and grow; we needed to feel the rush.
        Of course the rich kids were always leading the way.  Just like so many adults looking up to the stockbroker or CEO with the big house and Italian sports car, we all idolized them.  I could only imagine having a huge stack myself…being able to put 5 or 10 POGS on the block at once without flinching…or even…God forbid….playing for slammers!!!  I remember being in awe the first time I saw a kid play for slammers.  Soon enough, some kids were coming to school without any POGS at all.  These were the ultra elite.  They played only for slammers, and some of them had more metal than the rest of us had cardboard.  The rich kids had it, and we wanted what they had!!!  This is when POGS began to take on a whole new identity.
 
THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP

         Enter the smart kids.  These were the entrepreneurs, the future business tycoons that realized that POGS didn’t have to be won via the game we were all immersed in; they could be obtained through transaction.  Now I’m not talking about trading apples for apples, as POGS had been swapped for each other since day one.  I’m talking about trading anything else that a person owned for cardboard:  A new currency was born.
          Once we realized this simple truth, things changed overnight.  A person could buy almost anything with POGS.  The rich had just become richer.  The rest of us would begin to sell everything we had to join their ranks.  Kids would sell action figures, model cars, anything to get their hands on more POGS.  Of course this included the one thing we all had in common, the asset we were all the richest in: Lunch. 
           Now I’m certain that I don’t need to explain this, but one could make a handsome profit by selling any type desert item or junk food….the holy grail of lunchtime.  Cookies, fruit snacks, bags of chips, or chocolate bars could reap amazing rewards, but it must be said that anything down to a sandwich could be sold for the right price.  Kids would rather go hungry than go POGless, and so it became the norm for some to trade everything down to their last juice box for a cut of the action. 
         Of course the rich were always growing richer, but one classic monetary phenomenon would also begin to take place.  Enter…..inflation!!!!  You better believe it, POG inflation set in!!  Keep in mind that with enough REAL money, more POGS could always be purchased, so as everyone on the playground became relatively wealthier, the value of a single POG was always dropping.  Soon enough, a stash that had landed you in the ranks of the rich when it all began, now left you in the depths of the middle class.  As an economics major in university, it gives me chills to look back and see just how predictable this scenario was.

BASTARDIZATION, IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME          

         Before delving into this topic I must first state that not a lot of time had elapsed since the POG epidemic had began; perhaps a couple of weeks at the most.  When I look back it was amazing the speed at which this all transpired, and equally amazing was the degradation of morality, from innocent to asshole in a matter of days.
         Just like our adult counterparts, there were some in the group that realized that they could make themselves rich without playing by the rules.  And thus the bastardization of the game began…and continued to evolve at an alarming rate.  It started with what were known as “cheater” POGS.  A cheater POG had a small flap on one side, which would help prevent it from flipping over…or so was the belief.  Whether it worked or not, was not the issue, the plain fact was that people were attempting to stack the deck, and once others took notice, cheating would blow out of proportion. 
         Within days, there were backhanded deals going on all over the playground.  Fake POGS made of cardboard were being slipped into the pile while the other players were distracted.  POGS that had 2 identical sides were being thrown into the mix, so that they would never be flipped over.  Trading in POGS became so dirty that kids were getting ripped off left and right, but of course this was just the tip of the iceberg.  What really amazes me looking back is how prolific theft would become.

WHATS YOURS IS MINE

         Now I don’t suppose that anyone would be terribly surprised if I were to say stealing had become an issue; it seems logical enough.  What really blows me away, like most of the POG ripple effects, was how rapidly and how all encompassing the problem would become.
         Stealing began, I suppose, as it should have.  Some kid wasn’t looking at his pile and a passer by decided to swipe a few POGS and make a dash for it.  This in turn led to more and more brazen heists, culminating in kids losing their entire holdings in one foul swoop.  I personally knew a kid who would sneak out of school assemblies and then head back to the classroom where he would raid the supplies of every kid in the grade.  People would come up with more and more intricate schemes, and the problem became so rampant that I remember the school principal having to address it in an assembly...ironically enough this was probably going on at the same time that this acquaintance of mine was pilfering the stocks of every sucker in the gymnasium.
         The fact that kids were willing to steal doesn’t surprise me.  The fact that almost every kid, in some respect or another, was willing to break this most basic of moral codes is where the kicker lies.  The rules of POGS were always evolving.  The newest one: if you see a POG that no one is looking at, be it for a second, its fair game.  So the standard was set, and the golden rule was: keep one eye on your stash, and one on your neighbors.

GANG MENTALITY

         So where does it all culminate?  Would you believe organized crime??  If I hadn’t lived it, I wouldn’t believe it either.  Desperation to join the ranks of the rich had led to cheating and stealing; now things were just taken one step further.  If two kids working in conjunction could pull a much more effective racket, imagine what several could do!
         Misdirection was the classic case.  A group of kids would do their best to distract one or two targets, while the rest of the gang cleaned house.  A simple and seemingly innocent game with someone was guaranteed to be a heist if all his buddies were standing around watching.  Eventually, just like so many underworld deals, only a fool would play the game without his own posse at his side to watch his back.  If you played on your own you were a sucker.  One on one was a thing of the past…but don’t be fooled, no one in the crowd was there to watch the game.
         Eventually a new tactic would arise…and this one would take it about as far as it could go.  Since no one could be taken in by distraction any longer, the larger gang would resort to accusing the smaller one of cheating.  Once this move had been made, there was no stopping the ensuing brawl, and while the fight was raging, a few members would hang back and steal the good old fashioned way…while their victims were being throttled.  After that, fighting would become a regular part of the game.
         While the level of violence involved with the game is certainly a shocker, the most fascinating aspect, at least in my mind, was once again the entrepreneurial angle that some of my peers would take.  When I say that this game caused kids to begin acting as adults, and when I point towards all of the vices of the “grown up” world that they began to exhibit, nothing proves my point better than the arrival of loan sharking.  I shit you not.  Once the gang arrived on the scene, and kids realized they had the ability to “enforce” a contract, POG loans began to flourish.  If you needed back into the game, if you had been cleaned out one way or another, there were always people willing to lend you what you needed…for a price of course.  Imagine that; loan sharks on the playground.  Of course this would lead to the final cut.  When you couldn’t pay up you either took your lumps, or went out and stole what you needed.  The system descended into chaos.

AFTERMATH

         Eventually my school, like so many others would have to ban POGS.  Cardboard circles were no longer allowed on school grounds…sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?  The school had deemed POGS as a form of gambling, and had decided that this wasn’t a good “skill” for kids of our age to be picking up on.  Of course they were also looking to put an end to the rampant and uncontrollable levels of fighting, stealing, and otherwise nefarious behaviors that were going on within the fence line, and overnight it all ended.
         Looking back it is always the speed at which the situation evolved, that amazes me.  As soon as POGS moved off the playground, everything went back to normal.  Like black and white, gangs dissolved, fighting stopped, stealing became non existent, and kids were kids again.  Someone who kicked your ass the day before was sharing his cookies with you the day after.  It was almost as if we had all awoken from a trance.
         So what conclusions can we draw from this??  Where does it all leave us?  I’m not going to make the tired old argument that money is the root of all evil, or that legalized gambling ruins lives.  I am simply going to state that otherwise innocent children were almost instantaneously turned into a pack of immoral heartless bastards as soon as they were exposed to monetary forces and a quick way to increase their wealth.  Now I want to be clear in the fact that I am not excusing this type of behavior because it is “in our nature” but I am certainly making the argument that these types of activities are not a function of age.  One doesn’t have to grow up and become jaded.  The world doesn’t turn us into bad people.  The simple fact is that we are all pre programmed to look out for ourselves first, regardless of who we have to step over to do it, and thus I must turn my argument on my its head.
         Herein lies the complete truth.  I have stressed that this game caused children to deceive and defraud each other in the same ways that so many adults spend their lives doing. I have made the argument that kids acted like their adult counterparts when introduced to this system, but this is not what I truly want to argue.  Now I suppose this can be seen an attempt to throw in a big plot twist, but honestly it didn’t dawn on me until I was finishing up this piece, that in fact I have been completely wrong in my assessment.  We are all born as total selfish assholes.  It is up to those that help in our upbringing to reverse this process, so I will concede that this is not a case of children acting as adults.  In fact when we see this type of behavior exhibited by the adult population we should conclude that this is in fact a case of adults acting like children.  The thieves, gangsters, white collar criminals, and otherwise nefarious assholes in this world, are simply selfish fucking children who either never grew up, or were never able to acquire a proper moral code on which society thrives.  Perhaps this is a function of poor parenting, poor role models, or just man’s temptation to increase his wealth at any cost, but regardless of the underlying factors, the aging process usually serves to white wash this type of shit.  This being said, but don’t be fooled…not one of us is born innocent; it is a part of our nature.  POGS were simply a catalyst, like money, that led us to exhibit base level personality traits that we were all born with.

NOT ALL BAD?

         As a final bit of sentiment, let me recount to you my favorite POG story.  A close friend of mine moved from Russia to Canada when he was in elementary school.  Most of us cannot relate to this scenario, or truly understand how difficult it would be to move to a completely opposite side of the world and live under a completely different system at such a young age, but it helps to imagine how daunting of a scenario this would have been.  Obviously my friend didn’t know anyone and spoke very poor English, so making friends and interacting with other kids was difficult to say the least.  As he tells it, “I used to come to school every day with a plastic bag with a few POGS in it.  I would sit in the corner and kids would come up and play me for them.”  I must reiterate that my friend spoke very poor English, but since the rules of the game were simple, international relations had been made possible through games of chance.  For all of their shortcomings, POGS actually made it possible for my friend to create a relationship with his peers in a new country.  His sole form of interaction with his new comrades had helped him to created friendships, and strangely enough the force that sought to bastardize so many good relationships had actually sought to improve poor ones.
        In the end, I suppose there were always some who managed to escape all of the bullshit…perhaps a reflection of their ability to grow up a little faster than the rest of us.