Hello Johto!

Yes, I mean the region of the second generation of Pokémon. So yes, I did prefer the second generation of games to the first ones. I mean COME ON! You got to explore in both regions! If with every generation, Nintendo just kept adding another region for conquest to the already existing regions, the Pokémon games would be even more spectacular than they already are!!

I case my beginning rant wasn’t a tip off, I’m a big fan of Pokémon. Like really a huge fan. I still am, as evidenced by the pokéwalker constantly clipped to my pocket. Currently my Umbreon, Thymine, is on a stroll [Yes I do plan on having a complete set of Eevee-lutions named after the nucleic acids. Yes, I make nerdy things even nerdier in my spare time.]. It is rarely noticed cause I wear it facing inwards but it always makes me feel a tiny bit more awesome than I feel without it.

I have loved Pokémon since my family first got gameboy colors with the games Blue and Yellow. I actually wasn’t the first in my family to play the games. I was completely content with watching my brother and father play them. Eventually I got a turn and I was the one who really dedicated myself to memorizing all the Pokémon’s names and the different cities and there was even a point when I knew all of the gym leaders’ and elite four’s names. I got my own gameboy color in... third grade? And I got my own Pokémon Crystal game and I absolutely adored it (and lost it sometime in middle school :( ).

I was also very into the TV show all the way through the Hoenn region. My obsession ended mainly because my TV stopped receiving the new episodes (oh the unfairness of growing up with only an antenna for television reception). When the TV show first started my siblings and I made my parents search for a channel that would air episodes for us. I’m fairly this the when my siblings and I started watching TV channels that weren’t KPBS. We didn’t immediately find Pokémon, though with did receive Digimon for a while (which I would occasionally watch).

I really loved the part of my childhood that revolved around Pokémon. My brother and I would run around out backyard pretending to be in the world of Pokémon. He was often a Pikachu (nicknamed Sparky) and I was his trainer. He would alternate being a Pokémon and my opponent. And we would battle and I would catch imaginary Pokémon that lived in our backyard in the bushes. Along with the ones that lived in the trees on our weekend dog walk. Play-pretending was the best in the bouncy-house-thing at the local Carl’s Jr. that my family would occasionally walk to. I think this lasted from the span of time of when I was 7 until I was at least 10 (possibly older).

Around 7th grade I decided that being obsessed with Pokémon was something embarrassing so I hid it. I basically stopped playing my old games. When I got Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team, I hid it from by siblings (and my friends though they wouldn’t have known anyway) because I didn’t want them to make fun of me. Same with when I got Leaf Green. I completely forgo-ed getting Pearl for over three years after it was release even though pearls are one of my two favorite gemstone-type-things and when Sapphire and Ruby were released I said that if they ever release a Pokémon Pearl, I would definitely buy it.

But at the middle to the end of my senior year of high school, I admitted to my brother that I still loved Pokémon. At which point he laughed at me because apparently it was absurd to think that he’d make fun of me (... it wasn’t absurd when he was in middle school...). So I got a used version of Pearl that I played until Heart Gold came out and I got that. I even pre-ordered it because I love the Johto region that much. That was the reason I told my brother that I loved Pokémon; I was planning on getting Heart Gold and didn’t want to be too tormented.

[Note: This is a younger brother that I used to beat up on whilst growing up. We have always had a weird relationship.]

So, now I am an open Pokémon fanatic. And my friends laugh at me. But they laugh at me for other things also. And I laugh at them. And it works. And I’m happy. And I get to carry around a pedometer that looks like a pokéball. All in all, college is made of awesome.

TTFN!

-Merr


Sorority Events: 4
Israeli Dances: 2