I was coming home from downtown yesterday, and I was ahead of schedule.  The kids weren’t expecting me for another 20 minutes, and I knew they were all involved in their own projects and wouldn’t miss me regardless.  So it was an easy decision to swing into the park (I had to pass it to get to my street anyway).  I was running low on Poke balls, and this particular park has five different Poke Stops.  A quick little 10 minute loop and I’d hit them all.

I hadn’t even parked my car yet when I saw them:  Pairs and groups and people on their own, walking around, chatting, staring at their phones, and occasionally stopping to flick their fingers to capture whatever imaginary Pokemon they’d stumbled upon.  All of this in the 110 degree heat mind you.  The first guy I passed – a man I’m guessing to be in his 50’s – gave me a friendly greeting.  “Out hunting?”  he asked me.  When I answered in the affirmative, he said,  “Can you believe there wasn’t anything on the top of the mountain?   I thought for sure there’d be something good up there.”  We chatted for a couple more minutes until his daughter, a teenager, yelled at him to come join her where she was standing, several yards away.  “Oh what’d you find?” he asked as he trotted over.  “A Poke Stop!”

I visited all the Poke stops, gathered some balls, and captured some more Pokemon.  As I walked to my car, I heard the spirited conversations behind me.

Stranger #1 – “Oh I just got a Zubat!”

Stranger #2 – “Hey I hatched one of those.”

Stranger #3 – “My son and I just found one in the Walgreens on the corner!”

And on and on the discussions swirled… happy, friendly, upbeat dialogue between total strangers of all ages, united in playing a simple and free game on their smart phones.

In case you somehow missed all the hoopla over the past week or so, here’s a quick little Pokemon Go primer:

It’s sort of like geocaching, but instead of looking for physical caches, you hunt virtual Pokemon.  It uses something similar to Google maps to plot your location, but when you spot a Pokemon, it switches to camera view, so you literally see the Pokemon on the sidewalk, in the trees, on your friend’s head, on your counter, on the edge of the bathtub.

When you find one, you use your finger to flick a Poke ball at them to capture them.  You can stop at Poke Stops (at malls, stores, churches, parks, etc) to gather items like more balls.  There are also eggs that you can hatch by walking a certain distance, and Poke Gyms where you can battle with other Pokemons … but I haven’t gotten into all of that yet.  My 12 year is a little bit ahead of the curve, so he’s giving me pointers as we go.

It’s just a really fun, addicting, happy little game.  But that’s not why like it.  Or it’s not the only reason anyway.  This game, as silly as it may seem to some people, is getting kids and parents and teens and strangers uniting in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time.  It is helping people with social anxieties come out of their shells.  It is lifting the spirits of people with depression.  It is providing a conduit for a new way for parents to bond with their kids, and siblings to bond with each other.  It’s getting people out and exercising, running around their parks, and their neighborhoods and their city streets.  It’s getting people excited about something.

It’s not for everyone, and that’s cool.  Truly.  We don’t all enjoy the same things.  But in this internet day and age of the “I must find something negative to say about everything” crowd,  I’m seeing a large number of naysayers.  And why?  Because it makes people happy in a way you don’t understand or approve of?  With all that’s going on in the world around us, is a little bit of happiness such a terrible thing?

Anything that’s good harmless fun that gives people joy, that gives them a connection with others – heck, that gives them a connection with themselves – is always going to have my vote. 

So do I really think a game is going to save the world?  Well, no, not exactly.  But I do believe that people can change the world.  And who better equipped for the job than the people who are happy, passionate, and engaged… no matter what it happens to be that makes them that way.