morgankelsey.com

For all you losers out there who think that memorizing Pokemon minutiae is a waste of time, listen up.

I know an eleven-year-old girl who gained unfettered access to her eight-year-old brother's fresh xmas copy of Scribblenauts by knowing the coveted location of the last gym in Pokemon Fire Red.

Before you try leveraging your own knowledge base to further your agenda, let me clue you in on the techniques deployed in this instance, because it really was one of the more outstanding pieces of human manipulation I've ever witnessed. Imagine that your are eight years old again, and that your older sister knows the ONLY FACT YOU CARE ABOUT. Now imagine that you ask her 100-200 times a day to reveal this fact, and she stares over your shoulder like you don't exist, and says, "i don't care, go figure it out loser."

Now imagine that she does this EVERY DAY FOR TWO MONTHS WITHOUT BUDGING.

Attention evil super villians. Got a fool proof plan for total annihilation of the planet? Is the only problem that you have to tell someone in order to validate your existence? Your plan is safe with my daughter. I can see it now, the Earth is hurtling into the sun, and millions of people are screaming at her, "YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHERE THE GYM LEADER IS", and her just saying, "Leave me alone, Nerdington, figure it out yourself ".

The answer was Viridian City, she happily told me after I promised not to make her give her brother his game back.