My 5-year-old son’s love affair with Pokemon was the subject of my most recent column in The Daily Journal. The column details the reasons why children collect things and what they tend to collect.

Margret Nickels, a seasoned child psychologist at the Erikson Institute, provided the insight. She’s also a mother and has firsthand knowledge of Pokemon cards. When I mentioned to her about the game associated with these cards, she had a quick response.

“Oh, no one plays the game,” she said.

Most of the people I spoke with about Pokemon had the same experience. These cards are intended to be used to play a game, but nobody ever plays. Instead, the cards are simply collected like baseball cards or comic books.

Part of me is curious about this game - just not enough to research the rules and/or strategy. Plus, I have a feeling the game would be well beyond the capacity of my 5-year-old boy anyway.

However, I was able to make up a game that is within his grasp. It’s basically the same as the card game known as War.

We use the numbers in the upper right corner to determine the card’s value (see photo). These numbers end with HP.

I have no idea what HP stands for, but it doesn’t matter. In this game, we are simply flipping over cards to see which one has the higher value. If there’s a match, we have a “War.”

Bubba seems to enjoy this game, and I feel like I’m teaching him something about the value of numbers.

It must be working, because I’ve even seen him attempting to cheat on occasion.

I also think it makes having a Pokemon collection a bit more interesting.