Pokémon

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In April, we drove four hours south to Omaha. My kids liked animals then, and Omaha—unbeknownst to most people—has one of the best zoos in the country. We spent two lovely days at the zoo and in Omaha’s downtown district before we returned home.

And just like that, they were over animals. It used to be that we’d go to the library and come home with every kind of animal encyclopedia or fact book you could imagine. We read about all depths of the ocean; we knew which animals were indigenous to Indonesia and why Madagascar was such a unique place. For what seemed like years, I soaked in animal knowledge so that when the questions came—and they always did—I had answers.

Then, Pokémon took over.

Like most things, it happened slowly, then all at once. I suspect kids at school had been giving the boys the full-court press on their favorite Pokémon all year, but after the trip to Omaha, it was as if they needed a new fascination. The Omaha Zoo was their mecca, and they’d done their pilgrimage.

On to the next one.

First, we had to get a big-ass book with over 1,000 types of Pokémon because two other kids in the class had it, and we needed our own. Night after night, Eliot and I read through all 1,000+ in alphabetical order. Midway through that onerous task, I said, “You think these Pokémon are cool? Let me show you something else that’s neat.”

And well, if I had a time machine, maybe I wouldn’t have opened Pokémon Go on my iPhone, because to say it amplified the interest is doing a disservice to the word amplified.

Basically nonstop since mid-April, every waking moment is spent wondering: What if there’s something new to catch? What if there is a raid happening nearby? What if a friend sent me a gift? What if there’s something I can evolve?

For the first month or so, I was able to convince Roman that watching was just as cool as playing. And he was cool with that. Pokémon Go is for big kids, and buddy, you’re not even four yet!

But once he turned four in May… I had no excuse. I mean, I had agency. I could have said no. But Roman yells a lot, and 80% of parenting is picking your battles. For a few weeks in June, they were happy to share the one Pokémon Trainer we’d created together: Coocabacha.

When we weren’t playing the game, we were watching the show. Eliot must have cruised through 200 episodes of the original series in three months. There are 25 years’ worth of shows to consume, so a lot of content to get through. We bought chapter books that told the stories from the show that we read at bedtime. We printed off pictures of our favorites to color and hang on the walls. Pokémon was all-encompassing, and we were fully engulfed. The rage continued through our family vacation to Chicago in July, but by then, with cousins on their own devices, it was clear to me that Roman needed something to call his own. It wasn’t fair to relegate him to watching only, and parenting the “he throws, then you throw; he battles, then you battle” of it all added an extra layer of difficulty when the solution was sitting there, dormant, waiting to be awakened.

Rosé Cuervo was my Pokémon Trainer, created in the halcyon days of 2016. I trotted all over Reedsburg, Wisconsin, with my portable Wi-Fi device and my Qatar phone number. I have fond memories of listening to the Pod Save America guys (I don’t think that was their title then) that summer, mocking Trump’s campaign. Giddily talking about Hillary’s predestined return to the White House as commander in chief. I even kept playing the game when she famously told people to “Pokémon GO to the polls.”

And then she lost.

And I mostly lost interest.

It’s hard to maintain a passion for a game predicated on walking in Qatar. It’s too hot, and ultimately, I was catching fake monsters.

Rosé Cuervo fell into an Inception-like dream state, waiting to be rescued. And after the family trip, I committed to making it happen.

The issue was that I used my personal Gmail to create Coocabacha. I ostensibly used the same email to create Rosé Cuervo, but Niantic insisted I could only have one account, and Coocabacha took precedence. It took a few days, but I managed to unlock Rosé with the help of my Apple ID, and voilà, the tension between the boys was solved. Eliot was happy to take over Rosé Cuervo on his own, while Roman came to control Coocabacha. And now, I’d doubled the passion for the game. With a new character unlocked, new Pokémon needed to be caught, trained, traded, and evolved. The obsession grew.

The boys are thrilled when I go to work because, ultimately, it means I go where the Pokémon are. Each day after school, the first question is: “Papa, did you catch anything?” or “Papa, did you battle in any raids?” I am merely a vessel through which more Pokémon are caught, defeated, or evolved.

It’s not all bad, and I can’t pretend I don’t enjoy it. It means that a pair of boys who are definitely “stay-at-home” guys are happy to walk around the neighborhood (if it means they might get to catch Pokémon). It means that I can throw them in a wagon and take them on a long walk like I used to when they were babies, allowing me to stay fit or at least active. It means that when I go to work, I have something to do that isn’t just writing emails. And it means something we can bond over, enjoy together, and discover what’s new!

In that light, this weekend, I took our Pokémon learning to the next level when I said to Eliot, “Do you want to play with Pokémon cards?” His cousins gave him probably 2,000 cards this summer on vacation, and we’ve kept them in boxes, mostly untouched. Saturday afternoon, I asked him if he wanted to build a deck and battle with me, and it’s no joke to say that building decks and playing Pokémon took us eight hours over the next two days. First, we had to sort the cards by evolutions; then we had to build decks based on good pairings. Then we had to learn the rules of the game and figure out how to battle.

On Sunday, after a trip to the apple orchard, Eliot went four hours without asking for a snack, which is, for us, on a weekend, a record that may never be matched. But he was just so locked in on building the best battle deck that there was no room in his brain for anything else.

Which isn’t that surprising, because since our trip to Omaha, there’s been pretty much only one thing on his brain.

Put it to you this way: when I picked them up from the school shooting in August, the first thing they said to me when I found them in the gymnasium was, “Can we go home and play Pokémon Go?”

Cards are better than screens when it comes to passing the time. And who knows how long this obsession will hold?

For now, I am happy to entertain it. It’s something new, and while it means fewer reasons to drive to Omaha, it does mean we probably have to visit the Field Museum next summer when they host their Pokémon fossils exhibit.

In other news, did you know that you can take photos of Pokémon in real places? I’d wager to say that 40% of the pictures on my phone taken since April are the boys finding Pokémon in our house. I delete most of them, but each day, more appear, and they always take them faster than I can remove them. Most of my mornings begin with Roman asking me what my favorite Pokémon is—not because he’s curious but primarily so that he can tell me which one he likes. They are going as Pokémon for Halloween and circling Pokémon gifts for Christmas. Eliot is having friends over to play Pokémon for his birthday, and the amount of ink spent printing Pokémon to color each morning is easily enough to pay for a full subscription to the Pokémon Channel for an entire year.

We don’t do partial obsessions at the Hasler house, and after six months, there are no signs of this one slowing down.

I’m okay with that. Find what you love and do it as long as you want.

That’s life.

Early Onset Old Age