Arsenal of the Sphere:

My 10 year old is on the phone with his school buddy. I know I am getting old and out of touch with “the kids these days.” I am actually ecstatic about that. But considering the fact that my 5th grader just spent 3 hours doing his math homework while I hovered over him to let him know when to blink, I would have thought they would be comparing notes on the homework, or asking each other for help or setting up time to study together or try to get a jump start on tomorrow’s homework or work on the science project that is due next week. Nope! My 10 year old is pacing the floor right now and this is a literal transcription of what he just said 3 minutes ago (I had him stop and tell me what he said as I wrote this down):

I traded my level 1 Charmander, caught in a Pokeball, for a Garchomp, caught in a Master Ball. It was awesome! Now I have all of the evolutions: Gibble, Gabite and Garchomp. It knew strength, hyperbeam and whilrwind attack.

When did this boy learn a new language? What the hell is a Charmander? But since my head latched on to some of the words so I thought perhaps this was a version of Esperanto that only 10 year olds understand…Pre-teeneranto?

So to help with the translation, I had a little fun and “babel-ized” it. I took the original quote and plugged it into here. From here, the text is translated from English to French then back to English, then to another language and so on for 5 different languages and finally ending up at English again. This can be funny because after each translation it gets imperfecter and imperfecter. The end result was this:

I interested my level 1 Charmander, intercepted in Pokeball, for Garchomp, intercepted in an arsenal of the sphere. It was impressive! Hour I has all the progresses: Gibble, Gabite and Garchomp.It had known the attack of the resistance, of them hyperbeam he and whilrwind.

“Arsenal of the Sphere.” I have no idea what that is, but I want to have one.