Wii Waiting

I was number 14.

Though I had only been planning on spending 6 hours waiting in line to get a Nintendo Wii, it turned into twelve. Neowolf, Dr Jones and I had decided to wait at the Walmart Supercenter near their house since it is open 24 hours and would therefore begin selling their Wiis at midnight. This sounded like a good plan, but a lot of other people had the same idea and the line began filling up very quickly--meaning I had to rush down there at noon. On top of this surprise, we found out that we were going to have to wait outside in the cold all day. The Playstation 3 campers got to wait in the warmth of the Walmart, but they made all of us Nintendo fans face the cold in a shady alcove outside the building. They were kind enough to bring us some free hot chocolate at one point though, and at least the wind was mostly blocked by the bushes.

The day was long, but the wait was worth it. My parents stopped by in the afternoon to deliver an extra layer of clothes for me and Big Bold D dropped by in the evening with dinner--soup from Panera's. We also made some friends in the line, discussed video games and Trogdor and debated whether an enemy in Zelda should be called "Iron Knuckles" or "Dark Nuts." In the end we settled for "Iron Nuts."

All was going well. We knew we were going to get a Wii.

Until 11:00. At that point, the night manager showed up and did a quick count of the waiters, only to find that there were more than 20. And the store only had 20 Wiis in stock. The day manager had counted us up three times before he left and there had been exactly 20 each time. Someone had snuck into line. Thus the drama began. Around 11:30 they finally moved us inside in groups of five (we decided to give our group a team name--Iron Nuts, of course). Along the way, one of the imposters must have ducked out because we were one less when we were counted inside.

We spent the next thirty minutes or so wishing that whoever had jumped in line would just give up and go home because the night manager had woken the day manager up and made him drive in (and he lives on the other side of town) and he was not a happy man. He made threats and said that if the person who had jumped in line did not fess up none of us were going to get a Wii. It was childish and ridiculous. And, in the end, we were starting to doubt the man's counting skills because he made a mistake counting us and the night manager had to correct him. I think that the extra person in the end was nothing more than a counting error from the beginning, but the manager wasn't going to admit his own mistake. And the fact remained that we only had 20 Wiis for 21 people.

Thankfully, one very nice, generous man who was actually an employee at that Walmart but had waited outside with us all day long offered to take a rain check so we could all get our Wiis. I guess he was going to be getting a discount too, so good for him. Whatever the case, we were majorly relieved to know that our 12 hours of waiting were not in vain.

Now it's time to play!