Last Thursday I had my wisdom teeth removed. Always a pleasurable experience. Doping myself up on vicatin, for the entire weekend I lumbered about consuming massive quantities of Chicken Noodle O's and Malt-O-Meal. I seriously thought I was slowly turning into pudding.
As Sunday approached, I began to regain consciousness, remembering that Star Wars Episode 2 toys were to go on sale Monday night at midnight. Only three Toys R Us stores in Texas were going to open at midnight for the big sale, and one just happened to be five minutes from our apartment. The event is called Midnight Madness, and not without reason. Basically, when the first movie came out three years ago, nobody was prepared for the throngs of twenty-something grown men willing to claw, scratch, and beat their ways into stores across the nation in search of new Star Wars toys, hence the name Midnight Madness.
So this time Toys R Us prepared (I wonder if at the Toys R Us headquarters they have a backwards "R" key on their keyboards). Starting Monday morning at 9:30 a.m., they would begin handing out tickets starting at 1 and going to 200. Then, Monday night at midnight they would let the first 25 people into the store to shop leisurely for about 15 minutes, then let the next 25, and so on. Essentially, this just shifted the line waiting from Monday night to Monday morning. However, this also meant that if you wanted to be sure you got your pick of what you wanted, you better be in that first group of 25. Ronda and I made a plan.
Basically, starting Sunday we would go by TRU (Toys R Us) every 3-4 hours to see if a line had started. It would be every 3-4 hours because that's how long it would take for my medications to wear off (can't drive when you're high on the vicatin). Whenever a line started, we'd just jump in wherever we caught it, hopefully before the 25th person. So I went to TRU about noon, and nobody was there. When I went back at 2:30, nobody was there, and it was such a nice day I figured it be fun to camp in the car, thus we'd be there whenever the line started. So Sunday, at about 2:30 p.m. I started camping out in front of the TRU, in the back of our Ford Explorer. I went in and talked with the staff, asking questions about how everything will be set up (for Episode 1 there were big kiddy pools filled with toys, with morons diving over each other trying to get everything they wanted), will there be security etc... Ronda was concerned about staying in a desolate parking lot all night in front of a Toys R Us, something to do with bowling ball thugs I imagined.
They asked when we planned to get in line, and I told them we were already in line, camping out in our car. They were amazed, but very nice to us regardless. So I bought some Mountain Dew, went back outside and kicked back in the rear of my Explorer, reading a book and relaxing. At this time I start evaluating my life. There I was, loaded up on drugs camping out on the streets of Austin, only able to talk out of one side of my mouth, and even that was a barely coherent mumble. I was truly an Austinite, if I could just find a hemp jacket.
Anyway, I'm kicking back, when I see a police car pull up to the exit of the TRU. I figure the employees had called security to let them know that there would be people camping in the parking lot that night. Then, another police car pulled up at the entrance to the building, the cop jumped out and ran inside. I started paying more attention then. Two women walked out of the TRU, one in a nasty looking blue moo-moo with purple flowers, the other in a yellow shirt. The woman in the moo-moo started running. The cop car at the exit turned on its lights, raced over, the officer jumped out, caught the woman, and cuffed her and her friend. The first cop and some TRU employees I had been talking to earlier came out pointing at the lady. The guy in the car next to mine slid down in his seat. That's when I grabbed my video camera!
As one of the other employees told me later, they had caught the women using fake checks. For three hours I watched these police officers take turns holding the checks up to the sun and look for something. I'd have guessed a watermark, but surely there had to be something more to constitute them taking 3 hours to find it. Kids going to TRU that afternoon were thrilled, as each one took a turn screaming "Cops!" and running.
So just about when all this was wrapping up, Ronda drives up with all the smart camping equipment (aka food, or in my case Chicken Noodle O's, pillows, and an electric fan. We giggle at this being our first camping trip together, and every once in a while we would see employees peek out the store windows to look at the married couple camping out for the tickets. At about 8:30 p.m., it began getting dark, and we started settling in. The store had been closed for a while now, and employees were leaking out of the building to go home. One of the employees came out and said that we had been there long enough, and were officially the first ones in line. She said they thought it was great that a cute married couple had beat out all the scalpers.
They gave us our ticket (#1!!!), and said we didn't need to camp out, as long as we were there before midnight! Ronda was ecstatic (she loves Star Wars as much as I do, but wasn't terribly giddy at the thought of sleeping in the back of the Explorer all night, even with me), and we thanked them profusely. We slept very well that night.
So after work Monday evening we went home a napped, and at 10:30 we went up to the TRU. Already there were 150 people in line, and the Austin garrison of the 501st Stormtroopers. These guys had professional costumes (even their voices were electronically synthesized through the helmet).
We were told that a guy doing a fan film was looking for us since we had ticket number 1. He interviewed us both for his movie, then followed us around the store once we went inside. Somebody had a 2 year old dressed up in a perfect replica of a Jawa, and the kid was absolutely great. The entire crowd loved him. He was wondering about looking at the toys, and Ronda bent down and asked him, "what are you looking for?" The kid replied, "I'm looking for my daddy." Cutest thing I've ever seen at a Star Wars gathering, although now Ronda wants to have a child now so that by the time Episode III comes out we'll have a Jawa to dress up of our own, and if we're LUCKY we'd have twins so the other could be an Ewok.
I bought one of everything. Regardless, TRU did not have many of the figures, so Ronda and I went over to Wal Mart as soon as we were done at TRU. Wal Mart was not the same story. Scalpers were everywhere, rude as can be. They were throwing stuff everywhere and grabbing dozens of toys when others had none. They were blocking off areas with their shopping carts. I caught one guy sneaking a royal guard (the rarest by far here in TX) out of another guys basket, but I persuaded the jerk to give the figure back and apologize (down with the Man!)
In all, it was absolutely great. Ronda (this being her first midnight madness) had a blast. We ended up with one of everything, except the Royal Guard.
A happy ending. I called Todd (who lives in Tyler for now) at about 1 in the morning and he said he was basically standing alone in a Wal Mart looking at a thousand toys. Not a soul there with him (not surprising, when I lived in East Texas it was the promised land for finding any toy you wanted). So my brother went through and found 4 royal guards, one for me, one for my wife, and two for his collection.
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