Mom goes all out for Christmas
Now I’m not one of those mothers who gets up at 1 a.m. to go and stand outside some department store in the freezing cold at 2 a.m. in order to fight for the chance to get this year’s holiday craze for my child when the store opens at 8 a.m. Those people are crazy, right? But that’s exactly what I found myself doing at 6:30 p.m. Sunday morning, as I joined a group of half-frozen, desperate shoppers who still hadn’t been able to nail down a certain highly-coveted video game with only eight days left ’till Christmas.
The memory of that pre-dawn experience seems surreal to me now as I sit cozily by my fire place, wrapped in my favorite afghan, watching the flurries swirl past my window.
My child requested only two things this Christmas – a college football shirt, and a new video game system. That’s it.
When I pressed him to name a few more items, he refused, asserting “That’s all I want, Mom!”
I knew what the odds of finding one of these gaming systems were – I’d heard the horror stories from other parents about the “one that got away”, sold out just minutes before they could reach the store where just three happened to be available at 2 a.m. on a week day morning.
“I was so close I could almost feel it,” complained one distraught mother, whose attempt to obtain one turned out as fruitless as my own search (which has actually been going on for two-and-a-half months.)
But I had a game plan: working on a hot tip from an “insider” who worked at a Greensburg K-Mart, I excitedly rushed over to our own K-Mart at 6 a.m., confident that I would turn up early for the alleged 7 p.m. delivery.
The parking lot was nearly empty, and the rain was blowing sideways at 30 mph.
“Gee,” I thought, “nobody else knows about this but me. I’m a shoe-in to get one!”
Imagine my shock when the sales lady told me that they had sold out everything at midnight! (So much for insider information.)
The woman took pity on me, however, and gave me another hot tip. “They’re supposed to be arriving at Target at 8 a.m. If you hurry over there now, you might just luck out,” she told me.
By this time the wind was really kicking up, and the rain had increased in intensity. “I must be crazy,” I muttered to myself, as I pulled into Target’s parking lot , half-full already, with a human line snaking around the front of the building.
But I decided to go for it anyway, because the last time I was given a clue as to the whereabouts of this game, I was told that I basically had to quit my day job and appear at a local department store sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.m. last Tuesday – first come, first served – or hold up the delivery truck en route to the store if I wanted any chance of getting one in 2007.
As I joined the line in the sopping rain, with approximately 50 people already in line in front of me, I wondered how delusional I actually was to even hope that this venture would turn out well. Striking up a conversation with two local college students, I was pleased to learn that 65 units were available to the first 65 customers in line.
Quickly I darted out of line and dashed up to the front to take a quick head count. “I counted 48, plus an unknown number of people huddling under a tarp at the front. They were completely covered, so there could be four or there could be 20.
“It’s a pretty big tarp”, I added. “Oh,” chuckled my companions. “The Tarp People. They say they’ve been here since midnight waiting!”
I was already starting to lose feeling in my toes after just 20 minutes, and the umbrella I held was pretty much useless against the sideways rain.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” a young father confessed to me, “but it’s really the only thing my son wanted. My wife and I have been taking turns popping into stores before and after work, just in case we might find one.”
Finally, after about an hour of torture, made bearable by good conversation with the skeptical father and the two college students, the door opened and a manager stepped out to address the crowd.
“OK,” said the student, “this is the part where they tell us they’ll pass out one ticket to each person until the tickets run out.”
And he was right.
Mercifully, the management decided to let us in early, just before pneumonia had a chance to set in. As he began to pass out the tickets, instructing us to remain in single file, a wave of nervousness washed over me.
What if he ran out just as he reached me? Unbelievably, the manager had three tickets left and I was the fourth person!
Just as he ran out, he reached into his pocket and produced 15 more tickets! Eureka. I felt like Charlie Bucket discovering the Golden Ticket!
I was about to enter the chocolate factory! All my Christmas dreams had come true at last!
“Wait a minute,” said one of my line mates. “Your ticket says 8:30 on it. You have to reach the games before that time runs out, or you won’t get one.” My face fell as I looked at my watch, which already read 8:28.
“Oh. You’re kidding!” I whined.
“Yeah, I am. But you should have seen the look on your face.!” He gleefully replied. Verrry funny.
All of the searching was behind me now. As I talked and laughed with my neighbors in line, we soon reached the warmth and light of the inner sanctum of the store – the Electronics Department.
Comrades for two hours, we had just passed the greatest challenge of Christmas – toughing it out until we could reach our goal, doing whatever it would take to create a little holiday magic in the heart of a child.
Paula O’Connell lis a school teacher who resides in Uniontown.