On July 7, 2016, I did what I always dreamed of doing as a child: I began my journey to become a Pokemon master. Now, granted, it was 8 years too late for me to begin on my tenth birthday like you do traditionally but hey - late is better than never.
With its release, Pokemon GO has been sweeping the internet. The augmented reality game allows players to capture Pokemon in their everyday lives based off of the location of the GPS on their phones.
As someone who grew up with Pokemon and has, more or less, followed the franchise throughout the time I've been alive- it is easy to imagine exactly how excited I was for this. I downloaded the game as soon as I could and began my Pokemon journey.
Here are the stats from my first day:
Spider webs run into: 3
Steps taken: 15,000+
Pokemon caught: 36
Friends seen: 10
Smiles and laughs had: too many to count.
On release day, I played for 12 consecutive hours: from 10 AM to 10 PM. I started my journey by showing my older brother the game. He was the one who originally introduced me to Pokemon in the form of Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid and I had to share. Needless to say, I convinced him to go out on an adventure with me. We walked around the woods behind our house for 45 minutes and captured 5 Pokemon. As it got hotter, I went inside and began to set up for my exploration with my friends who had also downloaded the game. A party of three made its way out into the local swamp sanctuary and we walked around there for an hour, in heat index 109F weather. Needless to say, we were tired and hot and sweaty, and so we all trudged into a local place and got ice cream and water. There we met someone who worked there and had a great conversation that, otherwise, we wouldn't have had. Without the game, the three of us wouldn't even be together and would have never stepped foot in the shop for ice cream.
Within the few days of release, I have met many people whom I have known and haven't known- and all of us were united by our love of Pokemon. We arranged meetings to go out and explore together, adventure together and have fun together. In a world where everybody is addicted to their phones, this app has added a whole new social aspect to our daily lives that we have never really been presented with before. The game forces you to go outside encourages you to walk around and explore, and mot of all allows you to have competitive fun all at the same time. It has encouraged me to be more active, be healthier, get outside and drink more water. It is something that me and both my brothers now have to do in common- a sibling experience we otherwise couldn't have had. It's something fun we all relate to and can share with each other. This game has, honestly, turned a would-be boring summer into a fun adventure.
