Onyx Used Bide

"Oh my god. You don't even know what just happened. Onyx killed my Charmander. You know that move Bide? Well, yeah, I couldn't move and he killed him. And I was left with a level 2 Nidoran♀?!"

This is the conversation I just walked into. And now I feel like I'm finally home in college.

After mentioning the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver to my roommate, we began to reminisce of the days when there were only 150 monsters to catch, one of the last times she played Pokemon. She played Silver, but once the battery in her cartridge died she never went back to the series.

But that isn't to say she doesn't have fond memories of it. When I moved in with her, I spent my first day neatly organizing my Pokemon plush, only to be followed by hanging a poster of Ash and Pikachu above my bed. The first look is always a strange one from most people, but it provided a perfect conversation starter with the stranger that I would be living with for the next year. Right away she went to her desk and grabbed a small Metapod figurine and held it out for me to see. We laughed over the fact that it's a weird object to display, but at least we were bonding already. While she isn't quite the gamer (she mistakenly referred to Pewter City as "Boulder Town"...), she's one of the only girls I have met here that acknowledges Pokemon as something more than "Oh! You mean that cute yellow mouse thing?!" Regardless, I was happy to hear about her adventures in Boulder Town, as she went back to Brock to once again fight for the "Rock Badge".

While most will say that they dismiss Pokemon with age, no one ever does. To erase all of the hours we spent catching Pidgeys and evolving Charmanders would be the equivalent to forgetting time spent with friends. Now, I have someone here to anticipate HeartGold and SoulSilver with when it comes out in March. She just better not ask me for my DS because she's buying her own.