Gotta catch'em all! Gotta catch'em all! POKEMON!!! In any story I plan to tell my grandchildren in the future about my childhood I would be an old fool for not dedicating at least an hour or two of story telling to Pokemon! When I was in the 4th grade in 1998 these creatures and this boy with a cool ass name popped up on my TV screen and I became hooked! There was nothing cooler than hearing these crazy sounding names coming from these little monsters that came out of these things they called Pokeballs! I will never forget when my mom got me my first set of trading cards. I got the starter pack that came with duplicates of like five Pokemon and a million energy cards! I never understood the purpose of energy cards, I mean I did, but I never used em; those or those little gem rocks that came with em. I will never forget my first ever card trade, uggh I was dumb as fuck! I traded my holographic Machamp card for a damn Onyx and a Jinx card! My mom almost killed me when she found out that I had gotten ripped off by two older guys in my neighborhood. Her and my Dad tracked em down and made them trade me my shit back. After that they had my friend come over and teach me the basic to trading and what certain symbols on the cards meant. In about a month or two I was the fucking man! I had every card I could want, with the exception of a few. I remember my Mom packing up me and my friends in our station wagon and taking us up to J&K (the card trading store) and we would buy packs of cards or trade up with the store owner. Times were so awesome back then. It was amazing how these cards taught us about unity and responsibility and to an extent we even got better at reading...I mean Pokemon was a cartoon, but when it came to playing and understanding the game, you had to READ. I remember the front of my house being our own makeshift version of a Pokemon Trainer's Gym, we would hook our Gameboy's up to each others and battle and trade Pokemon until we had to go indoors. We battled and traded in the hottest of Summer days to the most bitter and chilling days of winter, we went hard! I will never forget the time we setup a tournament to see who could fight Pokemon the best, I won a few matches, but I'm pretty sure I didn't win. I remember one kid, ironically the guy who taught me how to play the game, was getting frustrated beyond all reason because he could not hit any of my Pokemon because I made them all too fast. The student kicked the teachers ass, and it felt good! The Pokemon wave was great while it lasted. I do not know of any Pokemon after the original 151 (I know it was originally 150, but Mew WAS in the intro to the cartoon series) I didn't want to know of anything other than the originals, so that is where I left this awesome game...as a matter of fact, it was not just a game, it was a culture. A culture that I miss but will never forget, shit I just ordered a damn Gameboy Color and Pokemon Yellow Version from Amazon while I was typing up the nostalgically powered piece! You can say "I'm too old" to have one or whatever, I could care less. I just like older versions of what is considered fun...hell, I still have my cards too! Can't wait til I get my package!
