Hooverville, circa 2006

It looked like a Hooverville, one of those cardboard cities that people lived in during the Great Depression. Teenage boys huddled together on concrete, each sitting in a lawn chair or leaning against a wall, wrapped in blankets. Steam rose from their breath in the near-freezing air. All they needed were some old slouch hats and a barrel with a fire in it.

The plight of the homeless in our fair city? Nah. It was just the guys waiting for Target to open so they could snag one of the new Wii game machines from Nintendo.

Yeah, my son was one of them. He and his two friends camped out in the Wii line for my son's "birthday party." I hated it, but I had to let him do it. Fred (my hubbie's blog alias) was all for it. Alan (my son's blog alias) had dreamed about it for, literally, months.

When we moved a few months ago, Fred and Alan decided that they would rather have the money than to pay movers and pay someone to build our new privacy fence. Alan helped with the moving and the fence building, and Fred coughed up the money for the Wii.

Alan worked hard, I admit. He's a cooperative kid. Now that he's six feet tall, if I need something moved or lifted, I go get him to do it instead of Fred. And he does it. It's kind of nice to not have to deal with Fred's pained look and, "Again? But you moved the couch last week."

Anyway. Back to the Wii. I guess the big seller, the one more people lined up for, was the Playstation. Luckily Alan has never had one of those ($500-$600, my goodness--are people out of their minds?). He and his two friends, all game nerds, were happy to focus on the Wii.

Here's how it went. The plan was for them to line up outside Best Buy and spend the night there, waiting for the store to open at nine a.m. They weren't sure when they would need to get in line, so they started checking it out about three in the afternoon, the day before--no one waiting yet.

Then one of Alan's friends started calling Wal-Marts (actually, he got his parents to call, something I draw the line at). At Wal-Mart, you could wait inside where it was warm, and because they were open 24 hours, they could sell it to you at one minute past midnight because technically that would be tomorrow. Then you could go home and go to bed at a halfway decent time.

All the Wal-Marts in town were already at capacity. Each one got twenty Wiis (Wii's?) and the first store that the kid's parents called already had nineteen people in line. The others were just as bad.

Then they found out that Target would open an hour sooner than Best Buy, there was no one in line yet, and there was more space to wait in the Target parking lot than at Best Buy anyway. So Target it was.

The kids were there from about four in the afternoon Saturday until eight in the morning on Sunday. Personally, I think they were out of their minds.

Here's what gets to me: they didn't plan. Both of Alan's friends were like, "Oh, I'll go by my house and grab my jacket and I'm good."

Puh-leeze. If I were going to spend sixteen hours in a freezing parking lot, by golly, I'd PACK.

There are areas I fall short in as a Mom. Halloween costumes. Reading aloud. Cooking, that's a big one. But I do Prepare. I take baby wipes along, I drag the stroller if there's any possible chance we'll need it, I take winter coats and hats, and extra clothes in case someone spills something. So there was no way I was going to let Alan sit and freeze in a parking lot all night.

I rounded up three folding chairs, on the theory that the friends would not bring their own chairs (they didn't, at least at first, although one friend did come up with his own chair later). I got out Fred's Army sleeping bag, the down one. When it's completely zipped, only your nose shows.

Alan put on two hoodies and his band jacket, went outside for five minutes, and proclaimed that he wouldn't need the sleeping bag. Okay. I can wait.

Fred dropped them off at Target, with chairs. No blankets. At this point in the evening it was far too embarrassing to be seen with blankets.

I took the boys dinner a few hours later. Apparently they had neglected to bring snacks, because Alan said they were "starving." There was tons of spaghetti and breadsticks left over from a church dinner, so I warmed up a bunch of that and took along two pitchers of leftover pop. And the blankets.

They were all hungry, and grateful for the dinner. Alan's friends didn't need blankets, though, because they now had some. The blankets they had looked pretty wimpy for outdoor November sleeping, but okay. (The ones I brought were actually comforters, nice and puffy.) I told Alan he had to keep the sleeping bag or he wasn't staying, and I stuffed it behind a chair, and I left.

Fred checked on them about eleven p.m. All was well. About ten other kids had joined them in line, and everyone was having a great time. Naturally, although falling short in the blanket and chair areas, all the guys had brought electronics to play while waiting. It was an outdoor video nerd party.

I set my alarm and called Alan at two am. They were FREEZING, he said. I mentioned the sleeping bag, and he said, yeah, it was helping him out, but his two friends were really cold. I asked if a couple of comforters would help (you know, the ones they turned down earlier) and he asked them and they said yeah. And something hot to drink, please.

So, I made a quick two a.m. Wal-Mart run because I didn't have any cash, bought a few groceries and wrote the check for ten dollars over, and drove through an all-night McDonald's for three hot chocolates. Dropped off the comforters and the hot chocolates. Alan came out to the car to meet me, teeth chattering. They still had several hours to go, and he was getting back in the sleeping bag as soon as I left.

He wanted me to come back at six a.m. because the store had promised to hand out Wii vouchers at that time. The kids could go home, then, and go back for their Wiis later. So at six o'clock in the morning I went back, parked twenty feet away, and called Alan's cell phone (what lows I have sunk to . . . )

I could see a flurry of movement in the sleeping bag, and then Alan answered the phone. The vouchers hadn't happened as promised, and they might just have to wait there until the store opened at eight. I could leave if I wanted to. No one wanted to get out from under their covers anyway.

Fred went back at eight, supervised the ritual purchasing of the Wiis, and brought Alan home. Alan slept most of the day.

He was happy though. I haven't seen him this excited about a birthday party since he was seven.

I hate the electronic game stuff, just hate it. At one time, I would have been appalled at the thought that one day, a kid of mine would wait all night to spend that kind of money on a game machine. The shame, the shame.

Fred overruled me a long time ago on the game stuff, and Alan turned out to be a video nerd. Well, it's logical--what other kind of kid would Fred and I have? A basketball hero? Not likely.

Bill Gates' mom probably wanted him to get out in the fresh air too. It is what it is.

And, upon thinking about it, I'm glad the Wii was in short supply and Alan had to wait all night in the cold for it. He was excited about this--not just the getting of the game, but the waiting. He didn't care about missing out on the warm indoor Wal-Mart lines where you could go to bed by 12:30, because he LIKED the idea of sitting out in one of those freezing queues all night. It was a challenge. It was cool. It was Something To Do That You'll Always Remember.

So, although I still hate video games, the "Waiting All Night To Buy One" thing was, well, okay.