My first exposure to the Pokémon Go game was a conspiratorial request from our two sons, ages 14 and 9.
"Daddy, can we ride our bikes down to the secret road?" my younger son asked one evening last week.
The "secret road" is actually an ordinary street near our house which is only "secret" because the boys use it as a shortcut to buy Skittles at the dollar store.
"Sure, you can go," I said, "but hurry back and stay together."
In an instant, both boys were on their bikes, pedaling like crazy.
Meanwhile, I settled back in my recliner to watch a car auction on the Velocity channel. After a few minutes, I noticed that night was enveloping the neighborhood, so I walked outside to see if I could spot the boys. I was standing by the road outside our house when a neighbor drove by.
"I just passed your guys a ways back," he reported. "They're on their way."
I gave him a thumbs-up and waited in the middle of the road, arms folded, tapping my foot. Sure enough, two minutes later, here came the boys, pedaling furiously back home.
"Where have you been?" I said, trying to sound ticked.
"We caught three monsters," my older son gushed.
"You were playing that Pokémon thing, weren't you?" I said.
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If you've been vacationing in a cave, you might not know that Pokémon Go is a so-called "augmented reality" game played through a smartphone app. I'll spare you the details, but the game involves, as the New York Times explains, "fusing digital technology with the physical world."
Translation: Imagine combining a nationwide Easter egg hunt with Google Maps and you get the gist. Players scour the countryside looking for little cartoon monsters which show up on their phones and can be "captured" by pegging them with virtual Pokéballs. How you win - or whether winning is even possible - is outside the scope of my curiosity.
All I know is there seem to be a lot of strangers driving around our neighborhood, collecting these little digital goblins. One of our neighbors recently has been overrun with Pokémon Go players. He believes his property is the the site of a Pokémon "gym," where the little monsters train. I take it to be some sort of Pokemon YMCA or, perhaps more aptly, a Pokémon prison yard.
This weekend at a lacrosse tournament at Camp Jordan in East Ridge, players were wandering off into the woods, looking for Pokémonsters. I even overheard a group of them plotting to rent some of those blue bikes in downtown Chattanooga to expand their monster hunts.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines of a lacrosse game, my wife informed me that a new Facebook post was touting "Chardonnay Go," a made-up game encouraging suburban moms to wander their neighborhoods in search of wine.
Don't laugh, somebody is probably already working on the app.
I told my co-workers about this the Pokémon Go craze Monday morning and predicted somebody would get shot wandering around on private property.
Within an hour, a reporter sent me a link to this story in a Daytona Beach, Fla. newspaper, which read, in part: "Reportedly mistaking a pair of teenage Pokémon Go players parked outside his house early Saturday morning for criminals, a Palm Coast, Florida man opened fire on their vehicle. The teens escaped unscathed. The car, not so much."
I'm generally in favor of anything that gets my kids off the couch, so Pokémon Go does have its redeeming virtues. I'm just hoping for new versions of the game: Like maybe, "Pokémon Go Mow the Lawn" or "Pokémon Go Take Out the Trash."
I'd pay good money for apps like that.
E-mail Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or telephone him at 423-757-6645.