Pokemon vs. zoology

Admit it. Back in the 90s, you knew more about a fictional set of ‘pocket monsters’ than you did about real animals. You learned the basic tenets of evolution from a collector card game and later, your gameboy, well before it was introduced in the classroom. Your cards were your prized possessions. Key life decisions took place while clutching a shiny holographic Raichu and deliberating on whether a Ninetales was a sufficient trade. If you were really dedicated you had a special folder to keep those babies pristine and free of grubby finger prints, probably the result of dunkaroos or le snak at recess – not your own of course, you had to suffer home-made.

By late primary school, you knew well the difficulty of choosing between a tiny fire-breathing lizard, a weird plant-dog and a chubby hypothermic turtle. The logic of allowing 10 year-olds to leave home without any formal education, to roam the countryside and force their pets to fight those of others, was ambrosia to your ordinary self. Stuck learning times tables, you dreamed in gym badges, long before you really understood what a gym was. The fictional world on that tiny gameboy screen was  all-encompassing. You were free there (or so you thought, perhaps not appreciating the limited possibilities presented in chronological order) able to roam the land solving problems and fighting with your pets until they fell unconscious. You were smart enough to continually outwit what was surely the most poorly managed gang of imbeciles to roam the planet, Team Rocket.

But that wasn’t enough. You had to get up early and quickly get ready for school in order to shovel in your weet-bix or coco-pops in front of the enthralling TV show. The show followed the adventures of three kids and their fighting pets as they explored the world, very, very slowly. Then, you dragged your parents to the pokemon movie, in which they slowly drowned in a sea of repetitive pokemon voices, thick as molasses. Yet you were rapt.

Then you grew up, and you slowly forgot about pokemon. But I’ll bet you’ll find a whole lot of unnecessary information crammed away in that brain of yours, just in case.