The Secret Lives of Constituents: Public parks.

The other week when I was finishing up gathering signatures to go get on the ballot, I was walking back to my bike and stopped to talk to a (middle-aged) (white) guy out on his porch who I had talked to earlier that day, and then I met a(n older) (white) woman walking her dog who I got to sign my petition, and then I finally walked back up to my bike, and there across the street in a park was another (older) (white) woman, just out there standing in the middle of the park with two little dogs and looking at her phone.

So, I started walking over and called out to her from a distance so as not to spook her, and she looked up and said hi, and then she said we had met a while ago when I was out knocking doors in another part of the neighborhood.

Then, I got closer and recognized her, and I said I was gathering signatures to get on the ballot now, and she agreed to sign my petition.

And, after that was done, she laughed at herself, and she said she'd been out there for an hour just staring at her phone and playing Pokemon Go, while her husband thinks she's out just walking the dogs.

"He's probably wondering where I am," she was like.

Then, she said that the park was actually a Pokegym, and since it was controlled by Team Red and she's on Team Yellow, she could go there and take on super tough Pokemon.

"Look," she was like, and she showed me her phone, and there was like a huge dragon on there, and something kind of robot-looking.

Then, she started scrolling through her Pokemon.

"I don't even know what all of these are," she was like.  "You have to really know the Pokemon to know their powers, but I just do trial and error, I learned this whole game trial and error."

Then, she fought the one monster more, and it died, and a Vulpix showed up on screen as her reward.

Her first Poke ball didn't catch it, so then she showed me how you could feed it a raspberry and use a stronger ball and you'd probably catch it, and she did.

"Some days I wake up at three in the morning and I turn my phone on, and there's all these Pokemon in my living room, just waiting for me to catch them!", she was like.  "They're not usually there, but they are in the middle of the night."

She then told me that some people told her that the aquarium downtown is a good place to play, but she hasn't had a chance to go down there yet to play.

"This whole thing sounds like a lot of fun," I was like.

"It is!", she was like.  "Just don't start until you're done with your campaign."