Plethora of Tranquility

Anyone who knows me knows I love virtual pets. I fell in love with them back in the 90s, and I’m still avidly collecting them and playing with them even now.

One of my fondest summer vacation memories happened back in July of 1997. I was armed with mad money, and I set out to have fun and buy some new treasures. On my excursion to the stores, I came across this strange new device I’d never seen before. (I think it was at Toys R Us, but I'm not sure.) It was a cute little rounded game device attached to a keychain, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand (or in your pocket). It had a screen and buttons, and it said you could take care of it like a real pet. Naturally, I was curious. So I got it. It was at that moment that my first ever virtual pet came home with me in the form of the Nano Kitty. I was hooked for life the second I pulled out the battery tab and activated it. It became addictive, and I had to have more of them. The Dinkie Dino was my second one. I was intrigued by how many different ones were available and all of them being different in some way. There were Giga Pets, Tamagotchis, Nano Pets, and dozens of off brand ones that you could find in practically every store, with more of them popping up every week as the fad became more fevered. Tamagotchis were the hardest to find since stores couldn’t keep them in stock. It was much later after that when I finally obtained my first Tama. Seems like my parents might have gotten it for me for either birthday or Christmas or something. But I’m not sure.

At the time, the technology and device itself was new and just getting started. I feel like I had a hand in setting the trend in my area, because I was the first of my friends to own one. Friends I had at church were fascinated by my Nano Kitty and asked me a lot of questions about it. Then eventually, they started getting their own. One friend in particular that I had at that time of my life started collecting them like I was doing. Every week when we met at church, we would pull out this ridiculously huge wad of virtual pets and sit out in the foyer and talk about them and care for them together and show each other the newest ones we got. She had some I didn’t and vice versa. It started out with a couple, then before we both knew it, we had a huge wad each that we carried with us. I swear to high heavens you could have probably swung it around and knocked someone down with it. Haha! Now that I look back on it, I have NO earthly idea how we managed to properly care for that many at once. lol! I feel like I took such poor care of mine back then.

But virtual pets are such a beloved nostalgic thing for me that I have a lot of great memories connected to. Such an innocent, carefree time of my life that I wish I could go back and experience again.

I still have every single one of my childhood virtual pets.

NO technology we have today can ever compare to these little watch game devices, imo. They rule forever.