I've loved pokemon for about as close to forever as possible. When the first episode was aired in the UK my dad convinced me to watch it. "you'll like it, honest" he goaded, but I wasn't convinced, yet 30 minutes later I was hooked.
It wasn't long before I noticed other kids at school, playing their gameboys at breaktime. "muuum! I want a gameboy! can I have one, please?" I begged, but alas, I was not allowed to just get one, I would have to wait till my birthday...
...
..Aaaaarrrghghggghhh!!!!! I couldn't stand the wait! I tried everything to compensate for not being able to raise my own pokemon, I played the trading card game, collected action figures, filled my Pokemon sticker album and bought all the cassettes and VHSs I could find (I dunno, some sort of prehistoric dvd's i think :P) but it just wasn't the same, so I took to the unhealthy habit of spending my breaktimes at school staring over the other kid's shoulders, watching them play their pokemon games (really was bad for me, I lost a tooth once)
But one day, my luck changed. The kid my mum babysat after school left his gameboy on my sofa along with his copy of Pokemon Blue. I was ecstatic, finally I could play the game i'd longed for all this time. It wasn't a bad thing to do, surely? Wasn't like I was gonna delete his game...
Which meant I couldn't save, and this was back in the stone age, before rechargeable lithium batteries and all that malarky, this badboy was running on AAs, which meant i couldn't afford to leave the game on to take a break. No, i would have to play it all night, non-stop, and play it I did. Several hours- and a lot of smiling- later, It was my bedtime so I reluctantly turned off the gameboy and went to bed. But I couldn't sleep. I had a headache.
But this wasn't like anything i'd ever felt before, the pain was intense, i felt sick, couldn't eat, and the headaches peristed for years afterwards.
Of course, my parents clocked it straight away, it was the gameboys fault, so gameboys must be evil. Suddenly, i realised the true meaning of mortification: I was banned from gameboys!
Of course, years later I turned 18, went on holiday with my boyfriend and bought a DS from a shop which doesn't exist near my home, so even if my parents tried to make me take it back (which they didn't) I couldn't have. :P
I don't blame pokemon for my headaches (they've stopped now anyway, thankfully) I blame the boy who left his gameboy at my house.
I told you this little story about myself to show how pokemon has affected my life in many ways, almost all my childhood memories contain some sort of pokemon reference, and it continues to shape my adult life. There are so many stories I wanted to include in this "little" anecdote, but i thought if I gave you a thousand word essay with bullet points and diagrams i might get ignored :P
I guess there's not much more I can say besides, Viva la Pokemon!
(oh, and just as a little afterthought: If I somehow win {here's hopin' :P} could you maybe bump me down to second place? lol)
Edit: wow, when I started writing this, no-one else had replied lol
xxx