Hey, guys!!! Today is my first anniversary of my time on Animal Jam. It’s almost unbelievable how much can change in a year. Looking back on it, it definitely feels like I’ve been playing AJ for that long, but that night with Flora on Skype feels like it was two months ago.
My story starts one June night, not far into summer vacation. I was getting extremely bored, so I texted my cousin. The conversation got deleted quite a while ago, but it was something like “Hey”. So I got on Skype with her, and she told me about this cool new video game she’d found. She said she discovered it on YouTube and thought it looked really cool. She shared her screen, and I saw a wolf named Flora Cottoncloud in a virtual world-like landscape. She said the game was called Animal Jam, and demonstrated with a game of Falling Phantoms. I think she got either 4th or 2nd place. She showed me around the place, Jamaa, and said that she was thinking about getting a membership. She showed me a couple of other games, which I remember to be Overflow and Temple of Trivia. I hadn’t even played yet, and I was already addicted. I asked my mom about getting an account, and she said she’d think about it.
It was nearly a week later when she said yes. I started squealing and jumping around and texting Flora. I named my account Amersonneawesome after a story I’d written with my friend. I got on Animal Jam, buddied Flora – a.k.a. CelestiaRings – and decorated my first animal. It looked something like this.
I claimed I didn’t like the girly eyes, and even though Juniper was a girl, she “just had short eyelashes like my mom”.
That day, I frolicked around, decorated my first den, and kicked everyone’s tail in Temple of Trivia. I did the exact same the next day. And the next.
A few weeks in, I decided it would be more fun with more friends, so I called Amber and told her that she needed to check out Animal Jam. She made her account – Rtangel781 – and a tiger named Little Spirittiger and got just as hooked as me. We played lots of AJ over the course of the next few weeks. In that time I had amassed quite a bit of money, Flora got a membership, and the diamond shop had appeared. Flora was furious. She’d gotten tail armor before it appeared, and it became non-rare. I was thrilled, since arctic wolves and snow leopards – which I had been a huge fan of – were now available to the general public. During this time, the hamster pets also became non-member.
The Adventures came out. I was annoyed that there was only one, and it was members-only, and the map was very confusing, but thankfully Amber sometimes let me get on her account to play.
I went on vacation to Missouri. While I was gone, Amber got a membership and phoenix armor had come out. I got home and found that another of Amber’s and my friends had joined under the name Bigears7721. Within a week, she’d gotten a membership, and I was left as the only one of our AJ-playing group as a non-member. Amber helped me campaign with my mom about getting a membership, and on June 25th, 2013, I got my first membership.
It was a mess. I had tons of animals, pets, and dens, and my den inventory was nearly full. My non-member den was flourishing, and I even had my birthstone on a desk. I spent lots of time at the 4th of July party, and bought lots of phoenix armor. Sometime during this era, Flora convinced me that Juniper looked better with the girl eyes, and I finally changed them after being cornered by a bunch of girls at the dinner party.
For the whole month, I couldn’t get a koala. It was the only non-diamond animal I didn’t have besides the rhinos, giraffes, and elephants, and it was rubbing me the wrong way. The koalas returned with Kimbara Outback exactly three days before my month had been used up.
Then my membership ran out. When Bigears, Amber, and Flora all renewed their memberships, I got extremely annoyed. I asked for a membership for my birthday, and ended up with four months – three from Flora and one from Amber. Actually, from Amber, I got a picture of Greely and a note that said to get on AJ when I got home. The next weekend, I received a three-month gift card from Flora, and used my ten diamonds for an arctic wolf: Sparkle Wingedlily. I did my best to make her look like one of those snooty ones in Falling Phantoms that everyone wants to lose, but she ended up looking exactly how she is in the AJ Story – meek, shy, and a good gardener.
Not too long after that, at the beginning of the school year, I got two more friends – Annabelle and her brother – to join AJ. They both bought about a year’s worth of gift cards and ended up very filthy stinking rich.
Lots and lots of things happened then. Jamaaliday came and went, as did Night of the Phantoms and the Hive adventure, which was like another birthday present. I had just enough weekly diamonds to get a snow leopard, so I did just that. On January 26th, my second membership expired, and I almost left AJ. Flora had been too caught up in school to play much anymore, and Amber was in debt so badly with her mom that she couldn’t buy another membership. I was on and off of Animal Jam – playing about once every other week – and ended up missing St. Patrick’s Day, April Fools’ Day, and Valentine’s Day on AJ. I felt bad, but I decided I was finally getting tired of it, just like my mom had warned. I made the mistake of half-quitting and sent Annabelle and her brother a rare bow and a rare top hat before deciding I wanted to continue playing. I still almost never got on.
Apparently, Annabelle’s brother was thinking the same thing. He quit Animal Jam for good and told Annabelle to give me his account, truckerman24. I was overjoyed, and, thanks to my brand-spanking-new 167 days of membership, I kept playing. To this day, I have never gotten another rare top hat.
The Forgotten Desert adventure came out. I finally began looking back on everything that had happened and felt really cool. I was going to be one of the old members now. Amber did a big car wash with her family and made enough money to buy another membership. Shortly after that, Annabelle quit, too, and this time Amber got her account.
The hyenas came out. I was beginning to wish that I could go back to that June night on Skype with Flora. I missed the newbie days. Just this past Monday, Flora bought another membership gift card at Target and started playing again. Flora could finally wear her spiked collar again, and I was glad, because the locket just didn’t look right on her.
That brings us to the present. Here I am, typing this out and thinking about the fact that I’ve been playing AJ for a whole year. Three hundred and sixty-five days. I can’t believe it.
Anyway, thanks for reading with me on this special day!! You’re awesome!!
Summer ❤ 😀 🙂 😛 XD
Tween Fiction Girl 