I vividly remember a few things from the very first time I fired up Pokemon Go. Sitting in my in-laws' living room unwilling to wait any longer, I changed up the region on my iPhone, so I could download the game before it officially rolled out in the UK (shh, don't tell anyone). I then proceeded to catch a Bulbasaur under the stairs and my journey had officially begun.
Pokemon Go gripped the world in the months that followed. Friends who hadn't shown an interest in Pokemon since they handed off their now very valuable Pokemon cards 25 years ago tracking Charizard with me on their lunch breaks. It was great, but I did with Pokemon Go in 2016 what I do with everything I like. The second I started to enjoy myself, it dawned on me that eventually my friends would lose interest, and so would I.
That day finally came, and even though I return to Pokemon Go once or twice a year for about a month at a time, I am very much off the wagon. Or at least I was. For the last few weeks, I have been playing Pokemon Go again, and I'm as invested, if not a little more so, than I was during that long, glorious summer when everyone on the planet was playing it, and it's because I'm not the one in charge. My three-year-old son is.
My son is very into Pokemon. I've tried to be very conscious of not imprinting my own tastes and personality on him, but when playing Pokemon games is a part of your job and a toddler is watching you play them, odds are they're going to quickly become pretty invested. It started with plushes he received as gifts, and then when he realized those plushes come to life and can be caught while watching me play Pokemon Violet, he was all in.
After I finished Pokemon Violet and he wanted more, it dawned on me that there's a game that puts Pokemon in the real world. A game that we can play together while out of the house, helping me to not feel quite as guilty as I do when I sit with my son and stare at a screen indoors. Yes, I know he's still looking at a screen, but he's outside, so it's better, that's just science. I waited a little while as I wanted to be sure he'd be able to take my phone and effectively play it himself, but when I finally introduced him to Pokemon Go, the results were predictably adorable.
I showed him the screen, and he immediately spotted a Weedle, a Pokemon he was familiar with after catching one in Pokemon Smile a few days earlier. Yes, he plays that too, but you try to get a kid to brush their teeth twice a day without the promise of a Pokemon to catch at the end of it. I explained to him that the Weedle was in the park opposite our house, at which point he sprinted to the window hoping to see the Pokemon for himself. Like I said, adorable. A conversation explaining they were in the phone, but we have to go out and find them came after, and then we went out to catch the Weedle.
Handing control of my Pokemon Go account to a three-year-old was daunting at first. I looked over his shoulder as he threw Ultra Balls off the screen while he got used to the game's mechanics. Once I had gotten over myself and moved past that, I started to fall in love with Pokemon Go all over again. He needed to be shown how to throw the balls a few times, but the first one he threw that hit the Pokemon led to another one of those very adorable moments. He celebrated similarly to me when I finally beat the Elite Four for the first time in Pokemon Blue decades ago. Damn, I'm old.
After I had quickly moved past the items I'd hoarded from the last time I'd returned to the game being thrown left and right, I started to enjoy myself almost as much as my son. Every new Pokemon he found was something he had never seen before, resulting in an excited squeal once every 60 seconds or so. I didn't care that he was using everything up because, well, it's his game now. I'm just watching. If he were to try and use a Master Ball on a Taillow like a fellow trainer's child did recently, I might step in, but other than that, I'm just tagging along for the ride.
Well, technically I'm a little more than a passive fan of my son's work in Pokemon Go. Even though his Pokeball throwing ability has improved greatly, it's still not perfect. Combine that with his want to catch every single Pokemon he stumbles across and those Pokeballs and berries run out pretty fast. That's where I come in. At the end of each day, I've been spinning PokeStops while I walk the dog, collecting the free daily box, and checking off any research he has happened to complete on his journey. That way, he has items waiting for him whenever he plays next.
If his interest in the game lasts longer than mine did, I'm guessing there will come a time when he learns the ropes and does all that for himself. There may even come a time when he wants an account of his own so he can start from scratch. If that time comes, I'll be handed back my account, and I'll need to decide what I want to do with it. Perhaps I will have been watching from the stands for so long that I'll want back in. Maybe I'll have become so accustomed to watching my son play that I continue to do that as he begins his own journey. Knowing what little kids eventually become, I've got a sneaking suspicion if he's still playing at a certain age, the last thing he'll want is his dad peering over his shoulder, asking him why he's not using all those Gastly candies to evolve his Haunter.