Pokémon cards never quite captured me the way it did the other men in my family - my brother, my nephew, my own sons. I played, mostly as a way to spend time with them, but I never went down the Raboot hole of collecting, assembling and tinkering with decks to achieve mastery. I never researched the byzantine skill sets of the little Japanese monsters, memorizing memorizing their evolutionary trees, reading guide books or consuming fan sites. It was a fun game, for sure, one that always played out differently (with the consistent exception that I lost, no matter who I played).
We watched some of the shows, and I dabbled in one of the GameBoy video games back around 2000. I do have cherished, wistful memories of my boys when they were younger, obsessed with opening packs, going to the comic book store and combing through the secondhand cards. But even with all of their juvenile diligence, they never managed to catch 'em all.