If you haven’t heard of the game that is sweeping the nation right now, well then you my friend have been playing hide and seek for way too long. (No, seriously. Where have you been?) People everywhere and of all ages are playing this new app and it’s gaining a lot of attention. It is one of those games that you will either love or you’ll hate. If you grew up playing the Gameboy games and trading the cards, then you couldn’t have asked for your childhood back any other way. If you are just trying to mow your damn lawn while children, teenagers, and 20-something year-olds keep sneaking through your yard; then you probably hate this game. Whether you are on one side or the other, over the past week or so, we have all probably had a few of these experiences with Pokemon Go.
1. When you first downloaded the app and had no idea what was going on.
Confusion, confusion, confusion. What do the paw prints mean? What the heck is an egg? Why do I not have all the badges yet? Where’s Pikachu? Mom, can you make pizza rolls? How much data is this using? Once you started to mess around with it for a while you found out that it wasn’t so bad after all.
2. That feeling of pure joy and excitement after you caught your first Pokemon.
Watch out world, there’s a new trainer in town. You had your doubts before this moment, but after that pokeball captured your first Pokemon; you were hooked.
3. Meeting up with your friends and spending the day gathering Pokemon.
Yes, the squad is together and ready. The water bottles are filled. The phones are fully charged and a killer playlist is bumping through your headphones. You spend the whole day searching and at times you will try to act like you are not playing the game in public, but people totally know you are riding this culture wave hard.
4. Catching someone in your backyard looking for a Pokemon.
No, that’s not a deer in the backyard; that’s a Pokemon trainer or to you, a person with too much time on their hands. You watch them as they scamper around in the woods or on the streets. You are intrigued by them to a certain extent, but also are wondering why the hell this game exists.
5. Trying to play at work.
This is a risky move. It all depends on what your job is, but more than likely this isn’t going to fly with your boss. If you can’t stay away from the game while you are at work, be very stealthy when you are creeping around the office while trying to get that egg to hatch. If someone asks you why you are playing the game, feel free to pull a Ben Wyatt (see above).
6. The place that you work at begins to get flooded with trainers.
Before this game arrived, your foot traffic was marginal at best, but now you can’t even walk across the store. You mumble a few curse words under your breath and hope they begin to buy a few items. You can’t believe you are doing this, but you end up putting a sign that states that “Pokemon are for paying customers only.” You begin to reevaluate your life and how you got to this point.
7. Telling someone they can't catch a Pokemon on your property so you can get it instead.
You know who you are after this point. You are no longer just a "casual player". You are now in this game and aren't messing around. Those kids could have given you a $5 bill and you would have thrown it right back at them. When it comes down to it, you totally Jamm-ed them and you are okay with that.
8. You just want this to be over with.
You have no intention of playing the game at all and never will. You shoot down any conversation that anyone starts about the game and just hope that it all blows over soon.
9. You have the most Pokemon out of your group of friends.
You are the champ. You have done the gathering. You have done the evolving. Pokemon is your life and you are willing to accept that. You may get a lot of flack for being THIS person, but they are just jealous of your mad skills.
Whether you are a fan of the game or not, you have to admit it that is nice to see more people exercising and interacting with one another even if they are on their phone while doing so. Who knows that the future of this game holds? You may delete it in a week due to your conspiracy theorist friend telling you it's all with the government or you may play the game for years to come! All I can tell you is that Pokemon is back and so is Blink 182 and Good Charlotte. Welcome back to the early 2000's.
