Collecting has always been a thing I love to do. I like the idea of finding something I have been looking for. It’s like a metaphor for life. I feel like I am always looking for something, and sometimes I know what it is and where to find it, and sometimes I have no idea, and suddenly it shows up. The thing I like collecting most is cards.

The cards are important to me because my parents gifted them to me a long time ago, and they remind me of them and the good things they got for me. I'm always just sorting them when I'm done with chores, and nothing is on my schedule.

One time I went to this Expo. I had never been to anything like that before. I wanted to see if I could sell a few of my cards and buy some new ones. There were so many people we could only go table by table and look. We couldn't just skim through multiple tables, so this made it even more difficult to find what we wanted and or to sell because everyone was running out of money and cards. Still, luckily my dad had found a couple of cards we had been wanting in are collection, so we traded and sold some of our cards and got 4 cards, but not the 2 big cards we wanted. There were also raffles going on at the Pokie Con, so we all entered one. My dad had won two very good boxes that had one of the cards we wanted, so we opened them when we got them, and my dad had pulled a 300-dollar card, so we went around and wanted to see if anyone wanted to buy it or trade for it, and someone did, and my dad had sold it for 320 dollars.

After I got back from that Expo, I thought about how, as I get older, I enjoy spending time with my family. While my cards can be traded or bought, I know what I have with my family is priceless and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

© Wyatt. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.