Cards are Evil and Illegal

So the other day I had a storytelling hour in the library with a group of kids. I read a book to them and then we drew scenes from the story on big pieces of paper. (Kids don't get to draw or do very many creative things here, partly because of a lack of resources and partly because creativity is not encouraged). Also, you are not allowed to check books out at the library. You are only allowed to read them inside the library. The reason why: the kids with ruin the books or steal them.

So anyway, after story hour, I went to the park with a group of 15 kids to play soccer, jump rope and cards (UNO and Go Fish). I was playing UNO with one group of kids, but the other group of kids wanted to play Go Fish so I gave them the cards. They were playing Go Fish (with normal cards, as I don´t have special Go Fish cards) and then about 5 minutes later I heard someone yelling loudly, "Whose cards are these!" I turned around and all of the children were running away in fear.

The person yelling was a policeman. I told him that they were my cards. I thought that he had thought that the kids stole them from me or something. But what he told me surprised me. "It is prohibited for minors to play cards!" What? I was quite confused. The young arrogant policeman told me that cards are addictive and children steal money in order to play cards. That sounded quite stupid and nonsensical to me. I told him that we were not playing with money and that we were playing children´s games. I explained that UNO helped children learn numbers and colors and that Go Fish helped with memory. He approved of UNO because it is a game of "cartas", but did not approve of Go Fish, which is a game of "naipes" (the difference between cartas and naipes is that naipes have kings, queens, jacks, etc.). He gave me back my cards and didn't take me to jail.

How ridiculous? The police is concerned about kids playing cards (as there are few toys or games here, this is one of the only sources of entertainment for kids) but they are evidently not concerned with the million bolos walking down the street. And he made this scene in front of like 50 people. Then he went to teach a group of children how to march for the independence day parade. They all had fake rifles and he was using his real glock or whatever huge bazooka gun he had to show the moves. How tacky! So cards are definitely more dangerous than guns... I was angry. He said that people would criticize me because I was playing cards. Good thing everyone plays cards in their houses here, hate the police and like me.