Yeah, it happened. I hate Pokemon but I wanted to get involved in walking like my husband has been with this new Pokemon Go craze (and I wanted to walk with him), but I couldn’t find an augmented reality app that I liked that I could use while we went walking. So there it is. I have a Pokemon Go account. I’m level six. I gotta admit, the avatar’s pretty cute.
Last night we went on an hour-and-a-half long walk, mostly spent searching for “points of interest” (or whatever they’re called) and catching different Pokemon.
Am I addicted to the game already? I’d like to think I’m not; I mean, I’ve only been playing for half a day. And it’s not like I’m going outside at 4:30 in the morning because I’ve got a wild urge to catch Pokemon. Sure, if one shows up in my apartment I’ll grab it, but I’m not going to go looking for them this early in the morning. Yeah, we went out late last night–“late” being around 8:30 to 10:00 pm–and spent the time searching for and catching Pokemon. I probably got more exercise in that hour and a half than I have since Phoenix Comicon. I certainly got the most number of steps in a day since then.
It was kind of funny…as my husband and I were standing on a street corner next to a church in the dark, with another Pokeplayer next to us, a car full of young guys–probably early to mid 20s–pulled up to the corner. When one of them leaned out the window to holler at us and ask what we were doing, I half-expected some jeering or taunting or at least him yelling “Fucking nerds!”…but none of that happened. He simply asked what we were doing…so, being the proud nerd that I am, I said, “Pokemon, man!” His reply? “Pokemon Go? Hell yeah!” That’s right. The quasi-thug hanging out the car window was a Pokefan. Who knew?
I was surprised by the sheer number of people in our small town who were wandering around late at night to play this game. Given that there isn’t much of anything in the area we were walking–especially nothing that was open for business–there were still random groups of people walking and chattering. Occasionally we’d find a car full of people playing, driving around to the different points of interest or “gyms” and playing there (one car had small children in it, so I assume the parents didn’t want them walking around that late at night), but most of the people we passed by were walking.
Good for Pokemon. They got nerds to get out of the comfort and societal safety of their homes and go out into the world and be active. We even chatted with one or two people briefly (not counting Car Guy).
Will this interactive motivation to get moving stick? Will I continue to play and get more exercise? I’m not sure. I tend to lose interest in things like this relatively quickly, but we’ll see.
For now? I gotta catch ’em all. Or something.