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Did your school life involve Pokémon?

Sheep

Sheep

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    A lot of us grew up with the series, and plenty of those people also had a school life that involved the series! I'm talking chatting with classmates who were also into it, having Pokémon merchandise up for grabs to the quietest table in class for the day, playing Pokémon at the playground with others (be it the actual games, or playing pretend). Did your school life involve Pokémon?
     
    One of my best memories from elementary school involved Pokémon- it was board game day and I wanted to bring a Pokémon board game (I think it's called 'Pokémon Master Trainer'?), but I forgot it at home. My dad actually brought it and knocked on the classroom door to give it to me. The whole class got to see him hand it to me, and when they realized it was a Pokémon game, they got so excited. So many kids wanted to play. I remember nodding my head and smiling like "Oh yeah. I'm so cool."

    My best friend in middle school was also a big Pokémon fan as well. He bought me Pokémon Y (completely unprompted) and got me an event Diancie that was happening at the time. He even lent me his DS Lite for some time when I broke mine so I could play one of my special game cartridges that only works on DS Lite for some reason. (It's been 10 years since then and I have yet to play that cartridge again.) We went to different high schools, so I haven't seen him since then.

    There are PLENTY more stories and bits I'd love to share, but I'll just leave it at this for now.
     
    Yes! I learned about it through classmates and even watched my first episodes and movie in class. Had a Marill backpack and lunchbox at one point. Had a card or two given to me, traded for some, and even bought a few when a classroom across the hall was letting a kid sell their extras for a school festival (specifically remembers getting a Fossil Kabuto).

    All I can remember from middle school is mixing Gen. III records with friends and then, in high school, teaching some of my friends to play the TCG that I had only recently learned to play myself. Also made a few college friends being mutual Pokémon fans.
     
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    A little bit in elementary school, but when I moved and started 5th grade essentially none of my friends were interested in the series from that point forward. It was honestly pretty surprising when I discovered how many other Pokemon fans my age there were through the internet because I always assumed I was basically the only one.
     
    There were a couple years in elementary school where the friend group I was in were just the kids who played Pokemon, and I have some good memories of spending time together after school at the playground either playing the games together or just talking about what we were doing in them and sharing information around. There were a couple of people I got to know in high school because of the fact people I was in classes with knew I was a Pokemon fan and spent time playing the games either after school on bus rides home or in class after our lessons once I completed my assignments. Those connections didn't last but the label of being a Pokemon fan stuck with me throughout the entirety of school and I'd ultimately say it was for the best.
     
    There was a Pokemon craze during elementary school when I was in it. Mainly the TCG, but also other stuff from random supermarket events of sorts.
    Then like 2 years later and nobody cared anymore. Was really big for those 2 years though.
     
    There were few people that like Pokémon in elementary school alongside me, but we didn't talk about them that much. It wasn't considered cool back then. My best friend, who I met in high school, had a crush on Dawn, so we talked about the anime a lot during that time. And at university, my wife and uni friends got into GO so I used my ultimate Pokémon knowledge to impress them.
     
    Pokemon was actually kinda the only point of contact I had with my classmates in elementary school! I guess my tastes were kinda niche. Almost any good memories I have from that time are related to Pokemon in some way, especially the cards.
    I didn't have many actual friends before that (and was bullied..) and I was obsessed with the anime, until one day I saw some classmates playing with the cards, and was immediately invested. One of them let me keep a common Eevee card he had doubles of (my favorite pokemon at the time) and I took it home and legit spent the whole day looking at it. It went downhill from there XD Btw, this was in grade 2, and I avidly collected pokemon cards until grade 7.

    Once we tried to organize a tcg tournament by ourselves, but we didn't have enough break time to get past round 1, and you can guess how well a bunch of 7 year olds could keep track of a game to finish the next day. It made me so frustrated, because I had really put in the effort when deckbuilding for the tournament...! I also vividly remember getting scammed by an older kid and trading a cool ass holographic Rayquaza for a mildly rare Gardevoir. Still bitter about it :')
    Ah, and one day we decided our class should have a tcg "guild". Doesn't mean anything, we just wanted a cool name for our group of tcg players. I got to draw the emblem! I was the only art kid in the group. I think it was an Umbreon? Wish I still had it.
    I also had my most anime moment when I saw some kids in the playground ruining a Magikarp card just because it sucked, and I felt like I had to say something because the anime taught us to not beat pokemon (yeah I was like that) so I asked them to stop and kept the card. The same day I got a booster pack, and found a Gyarados in it. I was overjoyed lol. I knew how silly I sounded even back then, but it still didn't keep me from yapping about it.

    Wow, I rambled a lot there... I just have so many little anecdotes like these from school, really makes me realize how I wouldn't be who I am today without Pokemon. It has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, goddamnit. I love reading stuff like this from others, nice thread idea!!
     
    Obligatory mention of the summer of Pokémon Go. I was in middle school, going into 8th grade. I couldn't download it since my Amazon Fire tablet didn't have it on its app store (didn't have a phone at the time). I was upset because I was missing out on an opportunity to talk Pokémon with people. (Oddly enough I hardly knew anyone who played the games, considering how popular the franchise is.) Ofc I knew the Pokémon they were talking about, but I didn't know anything about Go. My thought process: "They're talking about Pokémon?! Oh, they're talking about Pokémon Go..." Yeah, I became SUCH a gatekeeper of Pokémon around that time. An actual conversation I remember having with a classmate:

    Classmate: Have you played Pokémon Go?
    Me: No, but I played the real games.

    If I wasn't so socially awkward, I would've asked these kids what their favorite Dark type was, since there weren't any in the game at the time. I was a SPITEFUL little kid. Even when I got a phone and could download the game, I spitefully refused to play it. I did eventually get the game, much after the hype died down. Middle school me would be fuming if they found out lol
     
    Oh yeah. Absolutely. In elementary school I knew a lot of students that had pokemon. We would trade after school often. This would continue into middle school and even high school for me because there was always a group of people that played pokemon. I made my first trade in elementary school with my best friend, engaged in a few battles spamming legendaries and lv 100s (everybody did that), and there was always someone with an action replay that would give us access to the mystery gift items or infinite items in general. I find it weird that in elementary school pokemon was considered cool, by middle school it was so uncool you would be ridiculed for it, but then by high school it was cool again? Maybe because pokemon go was released while I was in high school? Basically, it was everywhere when I was in school. You could not escape pokemon during the DS and 3DS era. Also I played pokemon in a pretend way during recess back in elementary school and managed to get through the entirety of sinnoh in about 2 weeks.
     
    Wayyyy back 25 years ago when the first Pokemon fad hit where I live, I was in fifth grade. I had a friend who loved Pokemon just as much as me. Sadly, she moved away the summer after. Sixth grade and beyond, it became super taboo to like Pokemon. I don't know why kids are like that. SMH. It's funny how much people liked Pokemon again once college hit.
     
    Back in my elementary school days, it was generally not a good idea to let people know you liked Pokémon, it wouldn't take long to find a bunch of idiots bulling you for that. I mean, at least in my country it was still something very niche, and people who knew nothing about Pokémon other than Pikachu seemed to believe that it was something exclusively for 3-5 years old kids. Pokémon Go and other things that expanded the series' audience weren't available at the time.

    I did met a couple of fans, shared thoughts, experiences, and info on the games from time to time, but they were from a different classroom so we couldn't meet often. There were probably more "undercover" Pokémon lovers, but it's hard to tell because it was unfortunatelly something people usually didn't want to make public.
     
    Yeah, people would bring Pokemon Cards to school and trade them when I was in elementary school during the height of the 90s Pokemon craze. Surprisingly they were never banned, even tho we had a few incidents. I even remember watching a friend play Pokemon Red over their shoulder because they would bring their Gameboy to school and I didn't have any consoles at that time so watching was very exciting to me. As I grew up and Pokemon became less common, my friends and I still enjoyed it and would draw Pokemon all the time as a way of keeping up the fandom.

    When I moved to a different province, Pokemon wasn't really popular here at all but I was still into it so I kept drawing things during class and made friends that way. Some people even joined PC so we'd talk about that in school. 😅 When FRLG came out, I remember getting a handful of people back into it for nostalgia (it's so funny to imagine intense nostalgia for gen 1 back when we'd only had 3 gens anyway lol) and then when the DS games came out I was in my final year of high school and probably drove my teacher nuts by playing it in homeroom with another friend. But we always got good marks and still paid attention enough to participate in discussions so she looked the other way.

    And then in university I continued to have Pokemon charms and pins on my backpack and made a few friends that way too. :D At least once or twice we would angle our group projects in terms of Pokemon (I remember doing a skit about Pokemon for a language class) and I absolutely wrote a couple essays about Pokemon games/community for some of my later media classes.

    I guess I've never really been shy about Pokemon in my school life but I'm also very thankful in retrospect that I must have gone to really kind schools where people didn't bully or ridicule me for it because man I was not subtle lol.
     
    It definitely did.
    Almost everyone in my Grade 1 class were collecting Pokemon cards, talking about the Anime, and maybe playing the games back in 1999-2000. I wasn't playing the games but I was collecting the cards and watching the anime/movies, even watched the first movie in theatres. As I got older (at least during elementary school), Pokemon became less common and even I ditched Pokemon when I was in Grade 2 because I saw it as a fad. It also didn't help teachers were even shredding cards and showing the bag of shredded cards threatening people that this is what will happen if cards are brought in school, which felt like an insult since people have worked hard to get their decks and paid money for it. Suddenly, a spark happened to me in Grade 7 that reignited my passion in Pokemon but it was at the point where hating Pokemon is cooler than liking it.

    Cue high school and I went to a private school rather than a public school and thankfully cards and games were allowed as long as you didn't use them as distractions. Pokemon wasn't that popular in my class but it wasn't entirely hated either, which is fine.

    Things changed drastically when I went to university and I have met a lot of people playing Pokemon and talking about Pokemon a lot. I also made a few friends along the way. I did end up making some Pokemon art during my classes, which was cool but one of my drawing profs was absolutely brutal and said "I should have went to Disney instead of Fine Art" and one of the students was like "Anyone can draw this" during critique :rolleyes: and then I was in absolute tears. Luckily, one professor was extremely patient with me during my final year and he pushed me in the right direction so ig I do have to thank Pokemon for that, heh.
     
    Not really, but considering I was already in my teens when the series debuted, I can't really say that's too surprising. It might have been brought up a couple times in conversations, but that was about it.

    And honestly, it wasn't a big part of my life back then - Pokemon was just one of several games I played in my free time (and the bad cartoon that my brother insisted we watch at the breakfast table before school.)
     
    I was in 7th grade when I first got into Pokemon.
    It was 2001, the games were relatively new, and I remember it being common for students to bring binders of their Pokemon card collections to school and show them off at lunch.

    At first, the concept was the stupidest thing I had ever heard of and as my best friend's mom had at the time been sort of running a daycare at her house and would show it, we would slam it during lunch.

    Then I got into it quite by accident. I've told this story before, a quiet afternoon after school with all homework finished, the anime turning up on the TV menu, I turned it on to become an informed hater and ended up hooked.

    Shortly after I got my first game, Yellow and for a while through high school it was a big thing between my best friend and I.
     
    Sheep said:
    A lot of us grew up with the series, and plenty of those people also had a school life that involved the series! I'm talking chatting with classmates who were also into it, having Pokémon merchandise up for grabs to the quietest table in class for the day, playing Pokémon at the playground with others (be it the actual games, or playing pretend). Did your school life involve Pokémon?
    Click to expand...
    Yes it did ESPECIALLY in middle school
     
    Mostly in primary school. Back when Pokemon stake were popular we used to trade with each other while taking about the gen 3 games. Never actually smuggled my GBA into school though, so no schoolyard trades for me lmao.
    All that fizzled out in secondary school though. Any Pokémon discussion were relegated to online forums during lunch/after school.
     
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