Gotta Catch Em All!

When someone asks me if there were any mementos that I have kept throughout the entirety of my life, my answer would me a little unorthodox compared to many people. Your average Joe would probably say that they still have their first pair of shoes, or your really average Joe might not possess any item at all. I, on the other hand, can proudly state that I have safely kept my poster of the first one-hundred-fifty-one Pokemon on every wall of every bedroom I permanently dwelled in since I could remember. 

If you are unfamiliar with what the Pokemon franchise is, imagine a world filled with multi-color monsters, with you running around in the grass and forrest attempting to catch them, and then partaking in battle against other Pokemon owners.At the time that I came to be a fan, Nintendo, the company that introduced Pokemon, was promoting their new game, Pokemon Battle Colosseum. As a gimmick to make a few dollars, posters were being sold to display each of the characters within the game. As a decoration for my bedroom my dad got me one. 

At this point, I was pre-literate, in the toddler age division. But for whatever reason, I especially likedthe banner. I preoccupied myself, studying each individual character.I eventually began Pre-K, where I started to learn the basic alphabet. I'd later go home, and end up looking at my banner. The profiles of the creatures in the Pokemon game had letter names like the letters I learned at school. So, connecting one and one, I started making pronunciations of the words, saying them to my parent at seven. 

I give a great amount of credit to this poster for teaching me how to read and read words out loud. That poster had some pretty obscurely spelled names, like “Venasaur”,“Blastoise”, “Pidgeotto”, “Porygon”, “Articuno”, and many, many more. For all I know, I could be in a remedial E.L.A. Class, had it not been for my combined knowledge from Pre-K and experience reading off that flyer. 

I still keep this poster on my wall, and I have it placed in an area where I look at it almost every time I walk through the door to my sleeping quarters. I think about the literacy lessons it taught me, and I think about how long I've had it. For all I know, there's a pretty good chance that I'll pass it on to my children to help them learn to read. What's the worst it could do?

Noah Robidoux