Clarification: When I write, I don't prepare or organize my ideas, I just write what I would say if I was talking to you in person, so sometimes my blogs end up a little messy. I don't even proof-read what I write before posting it so you may find grammatical mistakes and poorly written sentences. Sometimes I'll read my blogs a day or two after publishing them and I may re-write things that weren't too clear and any embarrassing grammatical mistake. Also, English is not my first language, so I apologize if reading my blogs become a struggle. Of course, if this is the case, I would imagine you wouldn't continue reading.


Jul 11, 2016

Pokemon Go Is Cool...

  When I was a kid I lived in a little town called Guri in the middle of the Amazon jungle. From age 5, I was free to go outside and roam anywhere I wanted. And I did, I walked several blocks on my own or with my friend Sammy, a stray dog. Later on, when I was 7 or so, I would ride on my BMX bike, which allowed me to cover longer distances in less time. By then I had a few human friends.


Sometimes we would dare into the more "jungly" unexplored areas, where there were no streets or houses, just trees, dirt, vegetation, and sometimes really crazy looking creatures. I'd look at them from a safe distance, fascinated about their colors and shapes, and the way they moved. Sometimes I would poke them with a stick to see what they did, hoping they didn't fly or jump to attack me.

There were other creatures I was more familiar with, so I was more comfortable catching them. There were the lizards and the bigger grey geckos, which I discovered were much more aggressive than the lizards after getting bit a few times. There were the little frogs and the skinny white toads with huge green eyes, which could actually change the color of their skin, but many were white because they slept on the white walls of the prefabricated houses, so they were virtually invisible to the untrained eye. There were also the tadpoles, which I thought were small fishes, I didn't know they were baby frogs at the time. One time I cough a crazy looking bright green lizard, which turned out to be a chameleon. 

There were the giant red ants, which we call bachacos, but I wouldn't catch with my bare hands because their bite hurt. Some kids at school not only caught them with their hands, but also removed their antennas (so they couldn't recognize one another, they claimed) to have bachaco death matches between two of them. Kids would stand around the two fierce little red gladiators, watching curiously until one of them decapitated the other one with its strong jaws, just like humans did long time ago, during the time when the Caesars ruled half of the world. Some things never change.

There were also these weird winged ants (or were they worms? I can't remember) which you had to extract from these little holes in the ground with a long stick with gum on the tip. There were the harmless tiny centipedes, which were probably not real centipedes, and the grasshoppers, but I only caught the small ones, because the big ones, which were really fucking big, scared me, especially the huge grey ones. Those big fuckers were not hopping on the grass, they were flying at you or looking menacingly at you. Similar was the case of the butterflies, I liked the small yellow ones that you could always find flying around flowers, but I fear the huge ass black ones that would rest on houses walls near light sources, with their wings spread, which was probably their way of saying "I'm not a butterfly, I'm a mothman, look how big I am". There were also these huge dark beetles with rhino horns that also scared me, because I knew they could fly. I'm usually not a big fan of bugs, but I do like how creepy they look.

 

Occasionally you would encounter a sloth, which looked like alien monkeys to me and it always blew my mind seeing how impossibly slow they were. At night, there were the bats, each light post had 5 or 6 flying around them, feasting on all those dumb bugs that light attracts. I wanted to see one up close (I've been fascinated with vampires and other sinister things from early on), but despite of how big they were or how low they flew, the rocks I was throwing at them were no match for their radar and speed. Respect. 

There were always caimans floating on the lagoon by the 9th hole of the golf course, which meant you had to tell your golf ball bye bye if it landed in the lagoon. There were also snakes, lots of them. Finding a snake didn't happen every day, but it did happen often. There were all types of snakes, from the dark green ones that chased mice, to the ultra poisonous mapanares and corales (don't know their names in English), which killed a handful of people while I was living there, to huge boa constrictors that could have eaten me whole. The boas were usually coiled up and resting, probably because they had just eaten, and I remember people poking one really big one, but it barely move, its siesta was more important. Sometimes you would find one of the smaller snakes inside your house and your mom would freak out.

Of course, there were also plenty of stray dogs and cats roaming around, and the occasional caged parrot or monkey outside people's houses. There were also spiders of all kinds, armadillos, ocelots, and one time I even found a horse.

I loved climbing really high on trees (especially mango trees) just like my hero at the time, Tarzan. One time I broke into a house that I thought was abandoned (well, it kinda was, but that's another story). In on of the rooms of the house, I found one of the coolest things I've ever seen. When I held it with my hands it made me feel like King Arthur probably felt holding Excalibur. It was an electric guitar. So there you have it, it was in the Amazon jungle where I learned I liked getting high and rocking out. Just kidding, drugs are bad. Anyway, in the end I had to return the guitar, but that's OK because now I have 9 or 10 of them.

The period of time from when I was 5 until I was 11 was absolutely magical. I was free to explore the world, which I conquered and made my kingdom. I don't always think about those days, but when I do, I feel very fortunate to have had that experience. I don't think I'll ever be as free as I was back then.

I sincerely meant to write about Pokemon Go, which I have nothing against, but I got carried away remembering all the things and experiences I collected as a child, and now Pokemon Go seems so lame that I see no point in writing about it anymore.

CLARIFICATION: I don't play PoGO, and I don't see myself playing it any time soon, but I think it's a really exciting and awesome concept, and definitely a game changer, no pun intended.

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