I was just talking about this with my boyfriend the other day, and I just HAD to blog about it! There are so many memories attached with this cute little egg-shaped gadget. I first saw the tamagotchi when I was in 8th grade. My friend had just come back from the States (we lived in Panama at that time) and brought it along with her and I had no idea what it was or what it did at the time. Honestly, I thought it was some kind of pager in a really cute casing because it beeped so much! But then one random day, literally overnight, it became the latest “it” thing and everyone just had to have it! It took our school (and every school, really!) by a storm!

For all of the people who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about , the tamagotchi is a digital pet, which was first launched around 1996. Basically, you buy the pet of your choice (dog, cat, fish, etc) and your job is to take care of it the way you would a real pet. You have to feed him, play with him, clean up after he does his business etc and if you don’t do it well, the pet falls sick or EVEN worse, DIE!! And you don’t want that on your conscience now, do you??:P

Now, I’ve never really had a pet before (we move around so much, it’s just not very feasible) so the idea of having a virtual pet at that time, which DID look virtual and not like those creepy ones they make today that look so freakishly real, was very appealing! I practically begged my parents for days to buy me one. They are the really conservative “concentrate on your studies” kind of parents, so it took a LOT of begging, but eventually my stubbornness won and they got me a tamagotchi dog in a pretty red casing. Of course, the greedy person that I am, I also secretly wanted a bear and a penguin, but I made my peace with a dog!

The funniest part was that guys really got into it as well, and although they picked “manly” pets like dinosaurs and aliens, it was just so funny to see their “maternal instincts” come out over a piece of gadget! Of course, it was only a matter of time before they got banned in schools! Our teachers used to be teaching and we would all be busy mothering our tamagotchis! But, honestly, they shouldn’t have been! They should have been a legit home economics class experiment, in my opinion!  As it  is, we had this experiment in our Home Ec. class where we were supposed to make dolls and carry them with us everywhere for a whole week, pretending like they were our real babies. We had men (well, more like adolescent teenage boys at the time!) pushing strollers and carrying baby bottles and other baby stuff with them all over school! HILARIOUS!

And it was only a matter of time until parents got involved with all the insanity, because guess who was taking care of our pets, while we were at school? And we all know how tech savvy most parents are, right? It became one of their favorite tea-time conversations, where they all laughed and one-upped each other on how they accidentally killed the pet. And we would just cross our arms, give them mean looks and think, “How COULD they do this!!” Yup, everyone who ever owned this gadget has some disturbing “What my parents did” story to tell.

So, did you also own a tamagotchi? If you did, share your story!! And if you didn’t, I would love to hear about something that was a “big deal” when you were back in school! And please don’t say Facebook; not because I’ve something against Facebook, but because the idea of Facebook being launched when you were STILL in middle/high school is really depressing and makes me feel a gazillion years old!! Not cool, people. Not cool!! ;)

Lots of Love,

SK

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