Strange Gatherings

            One of the most fascinating things to me is how quickly complete strangers can bond over common interests. This could partially be because I, as an extremely introverted person, tend to prefer staying home and avoiding as much social interaction as possible. The idea is somewhat alien to me that people actually seek out social situations. That said, I do occasionally emerge from under my rock to mingle with the living.

            Last Thursday was one such occasion. The vast excitement over Pokemon Go had bred whole new social circles. There are now Facebook groups focused on helping each of the three in-game teams co-ordinate their catching and gym battling efforts within their city, as well as sharing their latest victories.

            On my team’s local group (team Mystic), the idea came up to throw a PokeParty at one of the local parks – just to get together, meet each other, have a barbeque and maybe battle the nearby gym. Within a few weeks, the pavilion was rented and the event was organized. They even decided to open the even to the rival teams.

            So, Colleen and I thought, why not? We went down to the park with my sister-in-law to see what it would be like, catch some pokemon, and maybe meet some people if it couldn’t be avoided.

            Now, this was an all-day event, which was nice for making it available for people with many different schedules. The flip side was that the result was that, rather than a whole lot of people, there was a small amount of people there with the members changing throughout the day. As an introvert, I greatly approved of this.

            For most of the two hours we were there, there were seven of us there. We flipped between hanging out as a group while eating hamburgers and wandering between the nearby pokestop and gym. All of us got along astoundingly well – not surprising, since we were all team Mystic.

            Then the gym was claimed by some team Valor players. Through struggling back and forth for control of the gym and watching the nearby people, we were able to identify the three rivals who were, like us, wandering between the pokestop and gym. So, after we claimed the gym a filled it full of magikarp (Pokemon players will understand how hilarious this is), one of the party’s organizers approached the Valor players and invited them to join us for some hamburgers.

            So, the party grew – and, despite the playful trash talk (now mostly aimed at the not-present team Instinct players), we all got along wonderfully. While I wasn’t there for the rest of the event, I think it can be considered quite a success.

            It’s even more interesting, though, when you look at our current society. We’re told from childhood to beware of strangers. We avoid all contact with people we don’t know. It’s like we have this fear that anyone we don’t know is a horrible person, or someone we wouldn’t get along with.

            Yet, all it took was a single point of interest to bring together a group of people who would never have spoken to each other. Not only that, but that point of interest (and food) was enough to ignore that we were on rival teams and competing for control of a gym. There was reason (at least for extremely competitive people) to be antagonistic, but we were all friendly.

            It seems to me that all it takes for people to get along is one thing in common. I wonder how much better a place the world would be if people, when looking at others, looked at the similarities rather than the differences (and maybe shared some food).

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.