Wednesday, January 8, 2014

type 1: grass type 2: poison

a very good number of us in our generation had a very important decision to make, somewhere around the ages of 8-10. no one could make this choice for us. parents and teachers had no clue, friends and older siblings may have tried to persuade, but in the end, the choice was our own, and none else. and that choice, of course, happened in a small-town laboratory with a senile old professor who can't remember his grandson's name. the choice: which starter pokemon to take with you into the tall, uncharted grass

gotta make my mind up..... which one should i take?


today, there are now over 700 pokemon with 18 different types. that's a lot to choose from, being that you only get 6 in your party. choosing a variety of types is important to- as different types are strong or weak against each other. fire-types like charmander decimate grass, bug, steel, or ice-types, but will be destroyed by any ground, rock, or water-type. some pokemon, like bulbasuar, have two types. so really, there's quite a lot of possibilities when making your pokemon team. in addition, each pokemon can learn up to 4 different moves to fight with. these moves may be different types than their own, to make things even more exciting. for example, the water/psychic types, slowbro, can learn flamethrower a fire-type move. isn't that just fancy?


people, like pokemon, come in many varieties, personalities, and have many, many skills (definitely more than four). for some reason we have a persistent need to label each other like pokemon- i don't really know why. often, when i explain that i teach special ed, i'm asked something like "well what kind of problems do your students have?" my typical answer is "well i can't really tell you" (by law i have to keep specifics confidential), but i can usually tell them something general-- students in my class tend to have intellectual disabilities. the response is often "yeah, but what kind of problems do they have?" in most cases they want to know specific disabilities people have, such as down syndrome, autism, and basically those are probably the only ones you've ever heard of.

it's a little sad that pretty much everyone (including special ed teachers) think of someone's disability before anything else about them. while it's good to have an interest in someone and, something that really is a big part of them.. there's so much more to people than an extra chromosome or a problem in their spine. but really this applies to much more than people who have disabilities.


we really like to label people. a lot. give them types. that guy is autistic-type, or that girl is weird-type. that guys is smart-type, or that dude is stupid-type. he's gay-type, she's crazy-type, they're cool-type, they're lame-type. that guy is less active-type so i don't want to be his friend. that girl is annoying-type so i'm not gonna talk to her. heaven forbid you ever meet a normal-type person.




surprisingly, people aren't pokemon, and the labels we give each other don't tend to be anything cool like fire or psychic-type. it's the natural, easy thing to do, but i don't think it really does us much good. how about we not take just one thing about a person, and stick it to them like it's all they are? God sees us as his children- his sons and daughters, who we really are and much much more, and not just as the one or two talents/faults we have.


so.. instead of trying to label someone like a pokemon in your collection, let's try to actually get to know people and love them for who they are. they're always a lot cooler than you'd initially think : )