TM Trouble

A lot of buzz has been going around about new features in Black and White, namely that TMs can be reused. This makes sense; when I buy software or a DVD, it doesn't explode after one use. So now we don't have to stress out about which move to teach to what Pokémon. They can all learn Thief if we want them to! This is a special breakthrough for me because maybe, for the first time ever, I'll actually use a TM.

In the previous 4 generations of Pokémon games, I never used my TMs. Like, ever. Any of them. Not because I couldn't find them, or didn't care for the moves they held, or because I had some stupid notion about keeping my Pokémon "organic". I didn't use them because I was saving them. For what? Naturally, the ultimate Pokémon team that I never actually bothered to put together. You know, the perfectly balanced, fully EV trained, level 100 power team, each with a move set carefully planned to be unbeatable. I was saving my TMs for SuperAerodactyl and GigaHitmonchan.

So any time I'd think, "Hey, maybe this Pokémon would benefit from a new move," and start to boot up a TM, I would reconsider. Once I used it, it would be gone. Gone gone. It wasn't like Rare Candy, where I at least had a chance of picking another one up. With a few exceptions (like ones sold in shops or Game Corner prizes), there was only 1 of each TM in the entire game.

I think my hesitation may be trauma from wasting a TM doing something really stupid in Blue, like teaching Dig to a Diglett, but most likely the problem is rooted far deeper. I do the exact same thing with real life objects: I save them up thinking that they'll be more useful in some future event which, of course, never comes. I was so desperate to be the well-prepared ant (as opposed to the foolish grasshopper), with my giant stash of TMs just waiting to be used in the right moment. Instead I was just a dumbass lugging a giant sack of laser discs around Kanto.

Sidenote: I didn't just do this in the early games. My TM sack in SoulSilver is just as heavy.