"left home focused on playing pokemon before the event ends. came home without playing at all, but didn't care because we helped an elderly man buy pokemon cards for needy kids in honor of his mother..."

#PokemonGO: Even my TL;DR is long apparently, so for those who have a short attention span - just read the thread title then move on. You got the gist of it from that already.This is really long, so up front TL;DR seems in order:My son and I went into town today to play pokemon and get groceries at walmart, but had limited time because I had to get home to get my daughter off the school bus. Instead of getting groceries quick and then playing for an hour, we ended up helping an elderly man pick out pokemon cards for little boys at a local orphanage-type of place, where he sends gifts every year in honor of his mother who was in the same children's home close to 100 years ago. We may not get a chance to go into town again to play before the event ends (we're super rural - no spawns or anyting else for several miles from our home) but that's okay because we felt like it was a pretty special encounter.So, earlier my son and I went into town to run some errands and try to play pokemon for awhile before the event ends tonight (should be at 7pm eastern /0:00UTC). We are super rural and have no spawns within several miles of our home, and very few pokestops unless we go the hour round-trip into the nearest town. We also always go there for most of our errands (groceries, banking, all other types of shopping, to walk on the rail trail, etc) anyway so it's usually an opportunity to get a handful of things done and play at the same time (yeah that's how I justify it, lol).We left in plenty of time to hit Walmart quick and then head up into the area with quite a few pokestops and a gym, and were also considering trying to stop at the charmander nest one more time before spawns rotate (which I Think are due over the nest 24 hours, though I realize it's not actually set in stone). But it didn't work out that way.We got into walmart fine, did our shopping quick, and got into the checkout line. As I was paying, I heard an elderly gentleman on a scooter come up behind us and ask my son something, but I didn't hear what. After I paid and loaded the cart back up with my bags, I turned around and asked what we could help him with. He said that he wondered if my son knew anything about Pokemon. My son is 21 and did play pokemon red when he was 5 (it's part of how he learned to read, on my lap playing together) and gold when he was 7 or so, but didn't keep up with the generations and told the man that he didn't really know much.I told my son that surely we knew at least enough to try to help, and asked what the man was looking for exactly. He showed me a package with three booster packs in it and said that he was buying gifts for some boys at the local "home for children", which is a sleep-at-school place for kids who have no family or no home to live in or who have been in a lot of trouble at home/school and are still young and get sent there. He said one boy had written down on his christmas list that he wanted pokemon cards, but he didn't really know what to buy.I told him (truthfully) that one of my siblings had been at that same children's home after my father died for awhile, and that I thought he was doing a wonderful thing. He told me that the reason he does this for the kids in the home each year is because his mother lived there for awhile with her siblings when they first moved here from a nearby state -- their mother left their father, who was gambling and cheating and treated her all kinds of badly, and she couldn't take care of them but as soon as she got a job and a place to live she got them back, and he got choked up talking about his grandmother. Said she was still a strong, proud woman even when she was 90. He was old enough that there was no chance she was still living of course (nor his mother for that matter) - he was probably not far from 90 himself.Anyway, my heart went out to this old fellow of course, and I said that we would help him out. We went over to the row of pokemon cards near the checkout line and I found some full decks that come with playing mats and everything and showed them to him and explained that it's a full game straight out of the box, so that even if the child doesn't have any other cards they can play with another kid right away. He liked that. I showed him a MewTwo deck (looked retro and pretty cool actually) and a Pikachu deck and showed them to him, and he asked, "what is MewTwo?" I tried to explain a bit, but he looked like it was a little overwhelming, so I handed that pack to my son (who really wanted to buy it, haha) and the man asked me, "what is Pikachu?" So I said "it's like the Mickey Mouse of Pokemon. Everybody loves Pikachu." and he nodded and said "Thank you!" and took that one and put it in his cart, where he had a basketball and some pokemon t-shirts and some other things.He wanted to keep talking, bringing up different subjects like football and baseball, then told us about being in college baseball in 1959! So imagine what a hard time his mother's mother had when she left her husband so many years before, perhaps around 1915-1920.. and here he is in 2016 - almost 100 years later - paying it forward still, buying christmas presents for the children who are there right now, today.It was a real privilege talking to that nice man, and I was sorry to have to leave to come home and get my daughter off the school bus. But I wasn't sorry to NOT have time to play pokemon after all today. He was really happy to have someone to talk to, and I feel like we had a little tiny part in doing a good thing. Like I told my son, he had sad eyes. I suppose at his age he's lost a lot of loved ones. Anyway, I hope everyone can find a way to feel good like I did today, this holiday season. It's a nice gift to give to yourself.Now I'm going to see if I can get the kids to go out with me for the next little bit and get some more bonus dust and XP! hope it was worth the long read. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2gGIJc4