Queen of the Slammer

I was the undisputed Pog Queen for a few shining weeks at my elementary school. Pogs, or milk caps, is a children’s gambling game that became absurdly popular in the 1990s. Stubby child fingers stacked a tower of thin cardboard discs (a “pog”), then used a heavier disc (a “slammer”) to try and flip as many pogs as possible. Kids alternated turns until they flipped every pog in the tower. If you flipped the most pogs, you won. Most importantly, if you were playing Keepsies No Take Backs, the winner kept those flipped pogs.

I feel about 900 years old explaining how to play Pogs. Like pretty much every fad, it sounds ridiculous when you spell it out, but Pogs swept through the playground like prairie wildfire, slammers rolling through swingsets like flaming tumbleweeds. Unlike virtually every other competitive playground activity, I was a crack Pogs player.

I might have suspected I had the heart of a champion because I was also a kindergarten Marble Queen. I was so good at marbles my parents were summoned to the school because I kept winning all the marbles from every other kid, thus indirectly bankrupting them of their tooth fairy money. My backpack was distended with the glass spoils of battle. I clinked like a triumphant wind chime as I sat on the bus, reminding my challengers of their embarassing losses. “She can’t keep all the marbles,” said the teacher. If I wasn’t five years old at the time I might have told her “bet,” and kept winning them all anyway. I was, however, five years old, and thus forced to redistribute the marbles amongst my schoolmates.

When Pogs appeared on the playground I sensed an opportunity to avenge my loss. The game was simple and cheap. A player benefitted from the kind of finesse and focus I had cultivated from a childhood spent mushroom hunting that the average sub-4th grader lacks. A slightly older kid staked my first game with a small stack of pogs and a slammer they had written off as a loser: it was irridescent plastic with an embossed fish skeleton. I remember that slammer because it would become my winning puck. I cleaned up.

After Marblegate I had learned to be less obvious about my skill. I would flash my slammer at a select group of opponents and we would retire to a remote corner of the basketball courts to do battle. I would let them flip a few early pogs to whet their appetite before slamming whole chunks of the tower with consummate ease. The best thing about pogs was that they were much lighter and quieter than marbles: no suspicious rustling or bulging in my backpack would give me away.

Unfortunately, adults were generally wise to the distraction of Pogs. Almost as soon as it arrived the game was banned, and carrying your gear was often enought get a detention. My reign was brief but glorious.