...on Pokemon

My neighborhood is full of Pokemon.

I can tell because my neighborhood is full of people wandering aimlessly up and down the streets, and through the dog park across from the building in which I live, phones in hand, eyes fixed unwaveringly upon them, looking for Pokemon.

And while I’m not completely familiar of the mechanics of the game, were my neighborhood free of Pokemon I presume there’d be fewer Pokemon hunters hunting Pokemon in the area. I gather that’s how the whole thing works.

Is hunters right? Catchers? Trainers? Or are training and hunting Pokemon unrelated to one another?

It probably doesn’t matter.

I’m trying my best my best to not find the whole thing hilarious, but it’s tough not to, especially as for the past week it’s been raining pretty heavily.

So I watch them from my balcony, looking like drowned rats, soaking wet, wiping rainwater off the screens of their phones, shoulders hunched over, shivering in the cold and the wet, bloody-mindedly determined in their quest to find more Pokemon.

Such is their commitment to catching them all, or at least to catching more of them than the online rivals I presume exist for them…

As I said, I’m not completely familiar with the mechanics of the game.

Which is fine.

That’s their business. They’ve chosen a hobby that works for them and it obviously brings them joy, even if it’s a sort of joy that seems weird and frankly hilarious to me. They don’t need my permission to have a good time, and their definition of what constitutes a good time is, at the end of the day, the only one that really matters.

Not everything has to be about me…

So, yes, my neighborhood is full of Pokemon.

You know, if you’re looking for Pokemon.