There was no such thing as a Nintendo game around our house when my brother and I were growing up, but much later I do remember buying the popular Nintendo game box for our kids which plugged into the television. I believe some of the games included Donkey Kong, Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, and on and on as this new video craze soon went ballistic. Yours truly, who grew up around the arena, the ball diamond and the pool hall, was never really good at playing those fancy electronic games and still continue to lose to my grandchildren, but now I just love to sit back and chuckle at the totally wild and wacky invasion of electronic games and gadgets.
I know that I will never take part in this new virtual reality experience of Pokémon Go, but me and my senior coffee buddies will be out and about watching the masses roaming around, checking out the ‘pokestops’, while trying to find those cute, colorful, and elusive so-called ‘pocket creatures.’ Believe it or not this new Pokémon adventure already has 729 revealed species who are blessed with such weird and wonderful names such as: Cutiefly, Pumpkaboo, Weppinbell, Jigglybuff, Bellsprout, Butterfree, Zigzagoon, Slowpoke and on and on in a frantic frenzy of mystery and fun.
One of the great advantages of this new Pokémon Go mayhem is that all the excited participants are required to be out and about in the community walking or running with their smartphones in an effort to advance in the game as well as getting lots of fresh air and exercise instead of just sitting around letting their fingers do all the walking. Hopefully, everyone will be watching for these avid gamers of all ages as they roam ‘heads down’ in your neighbourhood, and then cheer them on as they seek out their intended foes in a friendly battle of wit and wisdom. By the way, Nintendo, the world’s oldest and largest video game company by revenue, was formed in September 1889 in Kyoto, Japan as a playing card company and now has a market value of 85 billion dollars and is now zooming into instant ‘Pokémon prosperity.’
Just for fun
*Among the headlines from our topsy-turvy but great nation last week was a story about two little Ottawa girls, ages seven and five who had their lemonade stand shut down by the federal government. The gung-ho sisters had set up their stand on a patch of grass in an Ottawa parkway with hopes of selling cool glasses of lemonade to enough parched pedestrians to make over $50 so that they could go to summer camp. As we all know children’s lemonade stands are a time-honoured national tradition, of which all of us as kids, with the keen support of parents and grandparents have and always will encourage to get involved in through decades of wonderful hot and hazy summer days. The embarrassed NCC officials finally swept away the senseless red tape and presented the girls with a ‘lemonade stand permit’ along with an apology. As a result of all the extra publicity, these happy young ladies sold enough jugs full of cool lemonade to pay for summer camp as well as treat the neighbours to juice and cookies.. Hopefully up on the hill, the feds will concentrate on getting ‘the rest’ of the priorities of our great nation flowing smoothly and in the right direction, with emphasis on health, education, employment, infrastructure, and of course our oil.
The first Adam-splitting gave us Eve, a force which men in all ages have never gotten under control. Hopefully dear old Mother Nature will turn off the tap just a little this week so that we can dry out and get pampered by the sun, but in the meantime just go ahead and have a great week, all of you.