Answers:
1) No, I'm 25 now. I used to play ALL the time in middle school. (Between base set, jungle and fossil)
2) My favorite deck was pure water. I always loved water the most and no pokemon in the card game had resistances to it at the time.
3) In my decks, I tended to like dragonair the most. It had a weak attack, but it removed energy cards.... essential to winning.
4) I used a lot of trainers. My favorite in my deck was professor oak. Let me draw 7 cards. EPIC
5) My most memorable battle was in the Finals at a local tournament. I lost before my very 1st turn lol. I have only a 30 HP pokemon. My opponent had an Abra. Abra had a move that did 30 damage if you flip heads.... they flipped heads.... I lost in the 1st 4 seconds basically....
6) When I played the trading card game, I shared cards with my brother and sister. We had so many cards from winning tournaments between us. I'm talking multiples of every rare. So my favorite thing at the time was winning tournaments. Instead of getting pokemon packs of cards as my tourney prize, I was allowed to get Magic the Gathering cards!!! (they were slightly cheaper anyways

)
7) It was somewhere around 1998-1999 timeframe.
Random note: I still have a binder with my rares and a box with all the commons\uncommons. 95% of my collection is from the 1st 3 sets released in America. I still have 3 Blastoise, 4 Charizards and 4 Venasaurs

Amongst many other rares. I have @ least one of each card from those 3 sets.
ALSO, I did not change my avatar just for this thread lol, it's been the Blastoise card for a long time!