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I've told this story quite a few times here, but I'll retell it for the sake of the thread, and try to throw a few more anecdotes in.
I first got into Pokémon around the age of 6 after moving to a new town in a completely different state. All of my friends that I'd grown up with were now miles away, and I spent most of my time just sitting in my room being afraid of the roaches in our shitty apartment.
Then, a lady from across the hall moved out one day, and when she did, she gave my parents a brand new Game Boy and a copy of Red Version. I never heard the full circumstances, but supposedly they were originally intended for her own child. I always wondered if maybe some other kid my age dying led to my first encounter with the franchise.
I was very, very slow to learn how to read. Even at age 6, I didn't really know all that I should've. Pokémon taught me how to read in a hurry. In my memory, I remember picking Charmander as my starter despite not being able to read any of the descriptions or dialogue that Oak was saying (though I somehow understood that A was "go" and B was "no"). Then all of a sudden my memory of my first playthrough is blank for a long while, and jumps to Vermilion City, after defeating Surge, and all of a sudden I was able to follow the plot and understand where to go next. Somehow, I'd had the dedication to brute force my little way through the game at that point and picked up reading along the way.
And by that point, the other kids my age had also gotten in Pokémon, and I made some friends that I'm still in touch with today. Among my childhood circle, I was always someone else's rival -- regardless of whether it was Pokémon, Wave Race, or (eventually) Smash 64, whenever we did a tourney or something like that, it came down to me and some other kid. Games like Pokémon in my childhood gave me a way to stand out among my peers, and I think I'd still probably be alone without them.
Also coming up with our own truck stories was awesome.
