I never used to be into Pokemon. Never watched the anime. I got caught up in the craze when Pokemon Go was first launched. Did download the app and played it for a while. But I soon deleted it when the hype died down.

Never would I have expected that Pokemon would blast its way to the forefront of my mind, thanks to my son. He fell in love with it. Hard. So much so that we made plans to visit the Pokemon Centre at Jewel Changi Airport.

This is huge, bro. Outside of Japan, Singapore and New York City are the only cities to host Pokemon Centre.

Okay, I was quite entranced by the realistic-looking models.

Then, I realised that it was running a quiz. Participants who answered three questions correctly stood to get a Pokemon badge as a souvenir. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about Pokemon. But I knew my son would relish the chance to have the badge, so I morphed into Hunter mode! Held his hand and ran all over the store to find the answers:

I kept getting the questions wrong, no thanks to my apathy and ignorance about Pokemon. But boy, did I persevere. Finally, success was within my grasp! He got his badge! You can see how I changed my answer until I got it right.

Why was I so hyped up about Pokemon? Well, my boy has never shown a keen interest in anything so far. I would love for him to enrol in some swimming or martial arts or phonics or any other enrichment classss so that I could buy two hours of precious freedom he could develop his mind and body. But he has pooh-poohed all my suggestions so far. So, I feel that as his dad, I ought to fan this ember of interest.

He just declared today, “I want to be a Pokemon trainer when I grow up.” Geez, this is HUGE. I want to show him my support.

I finally have some fun being a dad. It’s about loving the things you normally won’t but embracing them anyway because your child does. And surprisingly, because of your bond with your child, you end up caring about whatever he or she is obsessed with. I guess this is what parental love feels like.