11 years old

by Marjolein Robertson on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 5:58pm

Yes. 11. We've all been there, unless you are 10 and under and then why are you on facebook? Why?


But yea, being 11. I don't know what you were into then but I'm going to presume most of you were massive Harry Potter geeks and were all patiently waiting on your owl from Albus. And I bet most of you too hoped that secretly you were at least half witch/wizard, your parents just decided not to let you in the know until it was time to head down to Diog-A and see Ollivander for your wand and then learn to use your (force) magic responsibly under the watchful eyes of the Hogwarts professors.

Yea I waited for that letter. And then when September arrived (by this time I was 11 and 4 months) I ran out my house, up the hill, and shouted to the heavens (pretty fitting because seeing as this was now 2000 that is where old Alby was by then residing) "I'M READY DUMBLEDORE, I'M READY TO GO TO HOGWARTS AND BECOME A WITCH!"
I bet you all did that too.


But that's not what being 11 is all about. No it is not.

Another wish I had, I prayed for, albeit, a little less realistic, was to leave home with a rucksack on my back full of empty Pokéballs and the ambition to become the world's greatest POKÉMON MASTER!
Achievable.

I really hoped by then they would have harnessed technology with the ability to capture and store animals electronically, cocooning them until it was time to release them purely to fight the opponent. I already had a little menagerie of three able bodied animals, lucky pets. The ultimate dream of course to head over to Japan and step into Pallet Town and realise, in a wash of grey scale and 2-D vision that this was what life was.

The premise of the game is actually as crazy as many other Nintendo story lines. Think of Mario, a plumber who on getting sucked into the pipes he's trying to fix ends up in a world of evil turtles and dinosaurs who keep stealing the Mushroom Kingdom's Princess, who is luckily a babe, otherwise it'd be pretty awkward when you FINALLY get to the right castle to bag her yourself and you discover she's a mushroom.

Yea now think of Pokémon - at the age of 11 any kid who wants to can leave home and travel from town to town, sleeping rough, capturing wild animals, training them, making them fight and hopefully earning some cash in the process.
That shit is messed up. And that shit is what I wanted to embark on when I was 11.