#67. Y2K (Friday, December 31, 1999)

#67. Y2K (Friday, December 31, 1999)

What was your best day…of playing/watching something for the first time ever, not knowing what was coming next?

I suppose everyone of a certain age remembers where they were on this day, counting down and watching the ball drop on television while the fear remained at the back of their mind that the whole computer infrastructure of the world was going to collapse the moment it hit the bottom.

I’ll admit that at the time I had no understanding whatsoever of these Y2K implications. Either my parents and teachers didn’t think it was a big deal or I was being willfully ignorant, probably both. The only thing I really had in mind during that time was, as the date suggests…wait for it…Pokémon. (#88 may have spoiled you.)

There were, of course, the cards (#88). A week earlier, right before Christmas, my mom came home with a large box of cards from her co-worker, who apparently had a huge collection but only cared about the rare cards. So the box had almost all of the (less valuable) common and uncommon cards from those first three sets. I ended up being forced to “share” and give a good chunk of those to family friends…but I made sure I kept the good ones.1

But now, it was also the video games. Specifically Pokémon Red, for which my dad and I had spent one full night in November setting up the emulator on our computer. Naturally, my addiction levels to playing that game had gone up pretty quickly, and so after a few days my parents restricted my playing to just a few hours every week2.

I had a bit of extra playing time during the Christmas break, but I wasted most of it running around aimlessly not knowing how to proceed with the new Cut ability I just got (the search engines back then sucked). Finally, I find that little corner of the map where you cut the tree down to progress…but then half an hour later my mom comes down to shut down my gaming privileges. This time the conflict escalates, and ends with her permanently banning my Pokemon-playing: under the (correct) premise that even when I’m not playing I’m “thinking” about playing instead of studying, etc.

So on New Year’s Eve, after my Dad and I go to Costco to buy a printer (for some reason), and I draw a Paras, I have an argument ready for my mom. I say: “Well, since you banned me from Pokemon a couple a days ago, I obviously haven’t been thinking about it since I can’t play; so there’s no harm in letting me play now.”

For some reason, that worked.3

So for the last four hours of the millennium, I play. And now that I know where the heck I’m going, I go far. All the way to Celadon City, beating the fourth gym leader, and getting into the Rocket Game Corner. Keep in mind that I had no spoilers for any of this, so I was exploring the original Pokémon Red game piece-by-piece fresh with no idea what was coming next. Except with the eager anticipation, with each new Trainer I faced or patch of grass I entered, of seeing one of the 150 Pokémon (that I knew so well from the cards) in the game for the first time.

It was the kind of special experience where I wish someone could just wipe all my memory of Pokémon so I could live it all over again.

Then Y2K came and went, the world didn’t end, and my first ever Pokemon save file was still intact. (Until two weeks later, when we had another argument and my dad went and deleted it permanently.)

  1. In return, a month later, I gave the co-worker my Base Set Electrode that he had been eyeing.
  2. Except once when Harry (#108, #88) was over for a school report, while doing “research” on the basement computer we instead played Pokémon all afternoon. We went all the way from Mt. Moon to right before Vermilion City that day – huge progress for two nine-year-olds.
  3. Though I think my mom may have just wanted me to have some fun on New Year’s Eve.