Worst Things I Ever Ate (Or Drank)

vomit flavored Bertie Bott's jellybean
-while hanging out with friends at the park, 10th grade, after first semester finals

mycoprotein (fungus protein) nuggets
-unsure; enough said

red and white wine mixed with cheap vodka
-with Jon, which ended up with me being super sick for three days with every symptom on the Pepto Bismol bottle. Also, Sprite does not equal 7 Up.

soda with a dead fly
-While watching Teen Titans 2003 in the summer after eleventh grade

gum and Pringles
-summer after fifth grade, after swimming and while playing Goldeneye with my brother in our garage

Memories and Pokemon

I have quite a few of these that are tied together, but the first that occurs to me is simple.

My mom and dad owned a condo in my hometown where they lived before they decided to have me. They moved to a house about seven months before I was born and rented out the condo. I remember one time my brother and me going with them to clean up the place after some particularly messy tenants (read: they were white trash pigs) left. We found cock roaches everywhere, and thus was born a stereotype about such arthropods that would last for years.

Then, when I was thirteen I guess my dad was helping my mom with some other tenants after he got off work and while she was still busy with hers (they were divorced by then, too). All I remember is playing in the grass with my other toys and thinking about the AWESOME toys he bought for me. An early victim of Pokemon and the obsession with Japan, I had found these human Pokemon figure sets straight from Japan.

Ash and Misty
Jessie and James
Brock and Nurse Joy

All were $25 a pop...and he got me all three just because I asked him to. Because he was trying to be the best dad ever. And you know what? Now that I think about it, he was pretty good. He got me a Furby (that I didn't even want...), Pokemon toys from Burger King along with Toy Story ones years before, bought me most of my Blue Gender DVD collection.

He did a lot besides buy me stuff, but this is where my mind goes when I think about him sometimes. Often he wasn't there for me emotionally, but he tried on many other levels that I often overlook.

He took me to the orthodontist often. He took  me and my best bud to see the first Pokemon flick. He stood inline for toys he thought would mean so much to me. He helped me ditch school sometimes.

So I guess I mean this partly as a tribute to my dad and what I think about when I remember my early obsession with Pocket Monsters.

So, I love you, Dad.

And I'll keep trying to catch them all.

(Pokemon! Oh, you're my best friend in a world I must defend.)

The Power of One

The first time I ever saw Pokemon 2000: The Power of One I was only 14.My mom dropped me off with two of my friends and brother. Initially it was another film where we got free cards with an admission ticket and it was Pokemon. The hopeless romantic I am saw and loved the Ash/Misty moments scattered through the whole thing, and I really wanted to see it again both because of that and because I wanted to recreate the fun of hanging out with my friends. We never did see it again in theaters. Maybe a week later we all got caught for sneaking out of the house. It was supposed to be our last time, and I was feeling so invincible. But then we saw his mom’s car. It was a collective ‘oh shit’ moment. He got sent off to New York for three weeks, taking the soundtrack for this movie with him. I found out from Jeanine a week after it happened. I confessed to my mom in Denny’s while we were on vacation in New Mexico, and I was pretty much off the hook. I tell you, that three weeks without him was hell. He wrote, and I wrote. I saved the letters. He had loads of fun, and I was alright. Life was life for the rest of the summer. Then when he came back he had gifts…but I digress (I still have that Bubbles keychain he bought me as well as the pictures he drew and sent).

Rewatching the movie brings back all of that as well as what the movie really means. Some guy disrupts the balance, and all hell breaks loose. It’s commentary on us humans. The Pokemon are all in tune with nature like our animals. They know when something is really wrong and want to fix it. The moral of that movie is that we humans have to live in harmony with nature and with Pokemon (animals). In the real world there is no chosen one who can fix everything by collecting treasures from three islands. The Deep Water Horizon that was leaking uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico for the last two and a half months is proof enough. We all need to be a part of the solution, whatever that is.

Still, I would gladly be that chosen one as naïve as that sounds.