Trading Baseball Cards with my sons...

My boys were each given a pack of baseball cards by someone at church this last week.  For the time being they are into collecting baseballs cards.

They are carrying them around the house and won’t stop asking me to trade baseball cards with them. I’ve asked them what they mean by that, and they don’t even know.

So we sat down and I asked them if I could just have some of their cards to trade with them.  That made sense to them, so they each gave me 5 cards.  We sat on the living room floor and I asked them what they wanted to trade.

“I want a brown guy with hair like mine.”

I leafed through my little stack and found a guy who appeared to match Josh’s description.

“He has a little longer hair and it’s coming out from underneath his helmet, but I think he’s who you’re looking for.”  He agreed and asked me what I wanted.

“Well, whatcha got?”

He showed me his stash and I found a guy who was making a diving catch.  I told him I liked “action cards” where players are making a play. He handed me the card I wanted with no emotional attachment to it whatsoever.

Caleb then look at my cards and saw the word ALL STAR on the bottom of the card and asked what that meant. I told him it meant he was one of the best players in the league and immediately his eyes lit up.

“I want that one!”

I looked at him with a smirk—kinda getting into this weird alternate reality—and spoke slowly.

“Hmmm…I don’t know, buddy. He’s one of my best cards, I don’t know if I can get rid of him.  I think I might need two cards for this guy.”

He didn’t hesitate.

“You can have two cards, I just need an All Star.”

I looked at the cards fanned out in his hand and picked a couple no names.  He handed them to me as I handed him whoever this All Star fellow was.

This whole game of ‘trading cards’ went on for a while until I realized that we were starting to trade back cards that we already traded away simply to keep the illusion that we were really doing anything other than playing a funny game of musical chairs together.

In the end, they got distracted by something, and handed me their cards and we put them all back together just as they started.  Nothing actually changed, but I can’t deny that something did actually happen.  

I suppose at the end of the day, things don’t have to make sense to have meaning.  The point isn’t having a practical point; the point is dwelling with each other in rather pointless things.  

Just a simple story that lingered with me today.