Unexpected Extreme Measures

November 19, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

There was a plan, you see? Showing up at a 24-hour Wal-Mart a few hours before midnight to buy a Wii seemed like an interesting enough thing to do. After all, we’d be waiting inside where it was warm–in what way could this be that different from waiting for a really popular ride at an amusement park, especially among friends?

OK, so Plan A failed.

My cohort and I, let’s just call him Dave, were going to try to get Wiis (Wiii? Wiien?) at the stroke of midnight. While I had no doubt that the machine would be worth owning eventually, I was mostly going along out of curiosity. To our dismay, two different 24-hour stores already had unoffical lines in place, some as early as the night before. Dave, however, was prepared to go the distance by staying overnight. Oh, the folly of letting him drive.

Apparently the local Targets were getting a fairly good supply of machines, the one minutes from my apartment included. Dave had this determination about him that wouldn’t be stopped, and leaving a friend in a parking lot overnight by himself wasn’t the sort of thing I felt comfortable doing. A quick dinner later we were unpacking folding chairs and blankets from the trunk of his car. We settled in as, and I’m not kidding, people further up in line were singing odes to the Wii, accompanied by guitar. And hey, there was sidewalk graffiti: Link and God (adjacent PS3 haterade not shown).

North Carolina isn’t known for its bitter winters, especially for those of us who’ve lived up North for a bit, but this night was cold. I’m talking it’s-too-cold-to-play-DS-while-waiting cold. Although, as we found, not too cold for the college crowd to loudly play football in the parking lot all night long while tossing back a few cold ones (cooler not required). Kudos to you gentlemen, I certainly didn’t want to sleep through this night.
A scant 11 hours later we were let into the store to make our purchases. We made it back to Dave’s where he promptly unboxed his machine and started making Miis of himself, his wife, and son. While debating the shape of my jaw was moderately amusing, I was dead tired, and it was my mother’s birthday–and my parents happened to be visiting at the time (I had called to tell them I wouldn’t be home that night, you can imagine how that phone call went over). In short, it seemed a good idea to quietly go home. I managed my way home and promptly fell into bed, the Wii box sitting on the floor, unopened. Dave was hosting a party of sorts around the Wii later that day–of course I ended up sleeping through the whole thing.

Posted in Games and Geekery | 1 Comment »