#pokémon

There are tons of stories out there about hacked Pokémon games. Some of them really quite neat such as the one about a version where you get a ghost as a starter. Some are ridiculous, silly stories about individuals dying after playing a game, or the game talking to them. God, don't these writers know less is more when it comes to these stories? Ah well, I digress.

I’m what you could call a collector of bootleg Pokémon games. Pokémon Diamond & Jade, Chaos Black, etc. It’s amazing the frequency with which you can find them at pawnshops, Goodwill, flea markets, and such. They’re generally fun; even if they are unplayable (which they often are), the mistranslations and poor quality make them unintentionally humorous.

I have never been as happy as I was on my eighth birthday. My mother handed me a heavily wrapped present containing my very first gameboy and a mint Pokémon Gold edition.

It'd been about a month since the fire, the cause of which is still unknown. I don't like to think about it, not because we narrowly escaped with our lives, but because our two dogs didn’t. Since then we’d relocated to an apartment in the city while our house got fixed up. Things hadn't been the same since then. Our home atmosphere, which had usually been warm and lively, had since shifted to a more depressing one that nobody wanted to be around.