TODAY'S COLUMN: SANTA'S HELPER LIVES HER LIFE AS A POKEMON IGNORAMUS

My children want Pokemon cards for Christmas. So do a million other kids, which means a million other moms out desperately searching for these trading cards.

Never mind that most of the searchers are as clueless as I am about what Pokemon are nor can tell the difference between a Charmander and a Bulbasaur.

I have been reading to my youngest son "The Official Pokemon Handbook." Every night before he goes to bed, I'll read through the attributes of these pocket monsters and their evolved forms.

But while I know that Pikachu is a mouse type, its element is electric and its techniques are thundershock and growl, I don't know why those techniques make Pikachu good against water and flying types or even what a flying type is.

All I know is my kids have asked Santa for Pokemon cards and unless some miracle occurs (Jimmy Stewart where are you when I need you?), I am going to be unable to find them.

But I am learning to live with that. After 11 years as a mother, I have come to realize that kids live very well without that toy they thought they'd die if they didn't receive. Not only that, but often if they do get the toy they asked for, they never play with it anyway.

When my oldest son was 4, the popular toy for boys that Christmas was Crash Dummies. These were action figure-like toys that rode in vehicles and never wore seatbelts. You crashed the vehicle into a wall and vehicle and Crash Dummies broke into tiny pieces. The TV commercials made it look like such fun to see plastic arms, legs and helmeted heads flying in all directions.

What wasn't fun was trying to find these elusive items, which every boy wanted, every store said should be in its next shipment and every parent was scurrying from store to store trying to locate.

After spending hours on the phone with store toy departments, repeatedly rushing out of work at a moment's notice when I heard a shipment was in, arriving only to find other disappointed, empty-handed parents, I finally found a pair of Crash Dummies on a motorcycle.

Victory was mine.

Until Christmas morning, when my son ripped off the wrapping paper and got a disappointed look. He had wanted his Crash Dummies in a car, not a motorcycle. And I have to admit, the motorcycle didn't move that well. Plus, the first time he crashed the Dummies, one of them lost an arm (which we never did find).

The Crash Dummies were stuffed into the toy box, never to be played with again. Instead my son spent most of Christmas Day (and many hours for years afterward) playing with a spaceship set my mom gave him. It wasn't a name brand item. It didn't cost that much. It was just a plastic lunch-box size kit that folded out into a space station, with a few astronauts and some shuttle and ship pieces that fit together in a variety of ways.

It wasn't something my son had seen on TV ads with lots of action, noise and happy, eager kids having the time of their lives (plus a few disclaimers like "This is not a flying toy" or "Figures don't actually crawl through enemy territory). But it did offer something many of those advertised toys do not the chance for a child to use his or her imagination.

That's the same reason kids love big cardboard boxes. It may explain why my youngest son loved to build tents in his room with blankets and chairs, but never played much with a child-size tent I bought him for Christmas last year.

I've tried to convince my kids that items are never as much fun as they appear on TV. That's as true for Twister, which just isn't the same when you are playing with your brother instead of the good-looking, fun-loving children that always seem to fill homes on ads, as it is for perfume. I've never put on scent yet and been whisked away on a horse through the snowy peaks to be greeted by a gorgeous man.

Still, what do you do when kids bring in Santa, the big man, the holiday honcho, the gift-making guru into the picture. How do you reason with a 4-year-old who, when mom or dad says a toy is out of the question, replies that he'll just ask Santa for the gift?

The answer I've found is telling my kids that copyright laws keep Santa from making trademarked items like Pokemon cards or Amazing Amy. That he and his elves have to shop for those items just like everyone else and that sometimes there are just too many kids who all want the same thing.

I've also tried to steer my kids toward asking for certain toys from Santa that I know will be available and take responsibility myself for items that might be hard to find.

So if Pokemon cards aren't under the tree for Christmas this year, it will be mom's fault. Not Santa's. But I can live with that, as long as Santa brings other, perhaps more imagination-requiring, toys to make up for the loss.

Teresa Johnson is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.