On The Go

I had quite a surprise on Monday evening. My eldest son offered to walk the dogs. In fact he also offered to go down to the shops and take some stuff around to my mother-in-law’s house. He then offered to walk the dogs… again. He then set out for “a walk around the block” for no particular reason whatsoever. I’ve been rather concerned that he doesn’t seem to get out enough lately. Being the summer holidays he tends to emerge from the bombsite that passes for his bedroom sometime in the early afternoon and then spends several hours either playing video games, watching TV or reading Japanese comic books before disappearing back to his cave without ever seeing the light of day. So, what gives?

It turns out that the sudden huge attraction of the outside world is related to a new game on his phone called Pokémon Go. I have been aware of Pokémon before in terms of the brightly coloured and badly drawn Japanese cartoon characters that have graced a series of TV programmes, films, playing cards and video games whilst not having the slightest clue what it is all about. Despite being indecipherable to me, my son seems quite keen on it and has spent many hours attached to handheld consoles doing… well, to be honest, I don’t know but he seems to spend aeons transfixed by whatever the activity is. Now Pokémon has forced him to go out and get some fresh air. I think it’s great.

I have to say that I was somewhat worried that he would be wandering around the streets glued to his phone and not watching out for the traffic. From what I can make out, this doesn’t seem to be the case and he only looks at the phone when it prompts him to do whatever it is that he is supposed to do. The plus side is that he has been out and about far more than he would normally and as well as coming along with me on a few favourite dog walking routes he also seems to have discovered bits of the local neighbourhood the existence of which he was seemingly oblivious to, including the woodland behind his school, one of the dog walking parks and also a giant bright burning thing that was hanging in the sky. I explained that this was the sun and a perfectly natural phenomenon if a somewhat rare one in Scotland.

I suspect that the fad for Pokémon Go will probably die down fairly soon but I’m quite intrigued by the technology and whether it could have any practical uses. Other than encouraging lazy teenagers to get out and take some exercise I’m wondering whether it could have some serious uses – possibly as an educational tool. I’m also wondering whether there could be variations whereby Pokémon are uncovered after tidying up masses of used washing and comics that have been left on the floor. Anyway, for the moment I’ll settle for an active teenager and a well walked dog.