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At age six that all changed. I'd made a brilliant discovery, courtesy of one of my then closest friend's little brothers. Pokemon was not just a cartoon, it was a video game (and that the SNES wasn't the only video game machine to exist, there were newer ones than that, and some were even handhelds!! (But this is less relevant to the current discussion)), and there were cards. Really cool cards with cool art of all my favourite weird little critters.
It was not long after that before mild fixation became mild obsession, and these Pokemon cards were in my letters to Santa for many years to come. My mum didn’t really get it, but she humoured me.
The issue then became that once I had the cards, I didn't really have anyone to play with.
Girls my age in my school didn't share my interest and looked at me funny for trying to explain, even my limited circle of other oddball girls didn’t see the appeal and had minimal tolerance for me babbling about it. Boys my age simply wouldn't speak to me unless under threat of death, so playing or trading with them was off the table entirely. So as with all things I couldn't get girls my age to do with me, I tried to get my sister involved instead... But like with most games requiring more strategy and thought than Candy Land, it wasn't really a fun time for either of us. She didn't have the patience to learn the rules and play properly, and I quickly got tired of trying to let her win at a game being played with no rules or reason.
Playing with Pokemon cards became a solitary thing for me. Instead of pretend battles the game was now collecting, sorting, admiring, listing, and re-sorting. And I had a lot of fun with this. I liked looking at the art and reading what they were meant to do if I could play with somebody else. I'd sit in my room or down in the basement looking at them and organizing them by type, by region, by what animals they looked like, which ones I just liked the most... At the height of my collection, I had well over a hundred.
Now, I only have two left. Kirlia and Milotic. Also a jumbo Darkrai but that doesn't really count, it's more like a small poster than a playing card. Still cool, but not the same thing.
I was lucky enough that my dad never threw them out in one of his rage-fueled cleaning fits, or that they were accidentally donated or passed off to my younger cousin when my mom sorted through old toys. How I came to lose my collection was a lot more random and nobody was really at fault for it. Our basement flooded. The water heater burst and my cards were rendered little more than mushy, mouldy paper. Completely unsalvageable. I had to throw them all out. They’re probably mostly dissolved into dirt at the dump by now. I stopped collecting after that, I didn't request packs for Christmas or birthdays anymore. I was getting "too old" to be asking for toys at that point anyway. I continued to love Pokemon, play the video games, watch the cartoon when it came on, but the cards... It hurt in a way I don't think I could have articulated to my parents without sounding completely and utterly deranged. A lot of my childhood toys were just too gross to keep after that. None of them were really all that special or valuable, nothing rare or unique was ruined, but this loss in particular was especially devastating to little barely-teenage me all the same.
So I was left with two cards.
The Kirlia I had been using as a bookmark upstairs in my bedroom, and a bent and faded sun faded Milotic my sister had stolen from my collection because it was pretty.
I keep Milotic in the back of my phone case now, she's already warped and damaged so it's not like it hurts. Kirlia sits in a picture frame on my vanity with a bunch of other silly little bits of tickets and photo strips.
I'm a grown woman now. I still really love Pokemon.
I don't live in that house anymore. I don't live in that town, I'm somewhere else now. Hours and hours away from there. There's a craft and hobby store in this new somewhere else. I'm in there maybe once a month, once every other month. They sell Pokemon cards. I’ve looked at the display often enough. I’ve thought about it a lot really, almost every time I go in there. It took until December last year for me to get over myself and buy a couple of packs, just for old time’s sake.
So I bought them. And I just let them sit there in the basket of miscellanea on my dresser for the last two-ish months. I've been a bit nervous about it. A part of me worries that if I open them, it just won't feel the same as it did when I was a little girl. That if it doesn't feel as good, it will spoil the memory of when it did. So they've just been sitting until today.
It felt really good, actually. Not the same as when I was a kid, but still really good.
Twenty two new cards. four holographic, one full art holographic one. Eighteen Pokemon, one stadium card, one item card, two basic energy cards (grass and dark). Of my eighteen new Pokemon, I have three normal types (two Hoothoot with the same art, but one is holographic), four fighting types, three water types, three dark types, three grass types, and two electric.
The full art one is a Lileep and I just think it’s so pretty. The warm pinky purple tones and the cozy, lived-in atmosphere of the scene is just so nice to stare at. The way it’s angled, it’s kind of like the pretty rainbow flashes are a part of the scene and coming from the lamps hanging over the Lileep’s little aquarium tank and bouncing around the room where the lady is sitting with her book and watching her friend sway quietly. I’ve always really liked the fossil Pokemon, mostly just because of the mining and underground base feature from the gen 4 games, but Lileep in particular is especially cute. She’s one of the ones my future Pokemon Professor OC has, which makes this find all the more special to me.
The Impidimp I got is also really beautiful though. The background is so busy and there’s so many little bits and pieces of colour all over the place, little swirls and dashes and blobs like some kind of chaotic dreamy little grove somewhere in the woods. And then in the middle of it all there’s just this silly little girl sticking her tongue out and dancing around? Or maybe making the “fuck you” arm gesture. I’m sure that’s not what the artist intended but it’s so cute and it really does look like that’s what she’s doing there.
There’s really no more point to this. I still love Pokemon. I bought myself two new packs after years and years, and I got over my kind of stupid nerves about opening them and I had a good time and got to look at pretty art of silly little critters.
The End.
