To Wii or Not To Wii?

Note: This is the companion piece to To Wii or Not To Wii on the Sarcasm Spoken Here blog. He gets to play now while I have to blog.

Two weeks ago my husband and I found our will wearing away with the constant talk about the Wii from our six year old son. All his friends have one and it's really fun. I know how addicting video games can be, and remembering all the times my mom urged us to go outside and play instead of playing Ms. PacMan for another hour on our Atari 2600. My son is still learning to read, but he can find and play video games on the Internet, like Spongebob Squarepants, or Ben 10, or Pokemon. My 2 year old son can do the same. He is actually playing some of the same games my six year old is playing! (They each have a folder of favorites and this is the only thing they are allowed to click on, and we monitor them, so it's not like they are freely surfing the web or anything. Just in case you were thinking that.)

I found out that someone at work just got a Wii and she loved it. We happened to have a meeting together and had to walk to another building, so I took the opportunity to ask her about it. She said her whole family is into it, even her 80 year old grandmother. She offered to let us borrow it some weekend when she and her husband are out of town. I couldn't believe it!

We had our chance Easter weekend. My parents were visiting, and it was the perfect opportunity to try it out and see for ourselves whether we could play. My son instructed us how to hook it up and use the remotes. We played Wii Sports and Wii Play. It was fun. After playing all weekend, we were hooked.

I went in search of a Wii and found that they are very hard to find. No one has them on the shelves, and if a store gets a shipment, they are out of them in an hour or less. Online is even worse. It takes minutes for the Wii to be sold out on Amazon or Target or another retailer site. The only way to easily get a Wii is to buy a very expensive bundle, which usually comes with games you don't want. It's the console itself that everyone wants because it's the least expensive and then you can get the games you want.

So after using my expert googling skills, I fould a website that you could use to get Wii alerts for online sales sent to your cell phone or email. Cool. We got about 7 or 8 of these through email but by the time we got them the consoles were sold out already. In minutes! More googling led to some industrious people who located two weekly ads for stores that were going to have the Wii in stock this weekend. Toys R Us and Circuit City. The Circuit City ad said to come an hour before the store opened to get vouchers, and they were guaranteed to have 10 in stock in each store. Only 10! Toys R Us had NO information in their ad. However, on some forum someone posted that Toys R Us usually opened early when they had Wiis in stock because people camped out in front of the store for them. They recommended getting there around 7:45 am. The store opens at 10.

I decided to take a shot at it this morning. Around 7:00 I asked my son if he wanted to go to the toy store and see if we could get a Wii. The store didn't have an ad in our paper so I thought maybe no one would be there. I also thought I would NOT wait in line until 10 for a video game. No way. My son was very excited. I never saw him get ready so fast. I thought it might be fun.

We got to the store before 8:00. and we spotted people sitting in two other cars in the parking lot. We watched employees go into the store. Two people came to my car window and asked me whether I knew how many Wiis the store had and whether it would open early. Three more cars showed up. We all sat in our cars for a while and waited. I chronicled the event on Twitter because there was nothing else to do and my husband was home in the warm house with his coffee while I was in the cold minivan with a restless six year old. The store didn't open at 8. We decided to wait.

Finally around 8:45 we decided to get out of the car. My son couldn't stay cooped up any longer. Another boy, about 12, was wandering around by the front door. As we headed toward the door, a chain reaction occurred. Everyone else got out of their car and headed for the door. We ended up second in line and stood in the cold, hoping we'd be able to convince the employees to let us in.

It was sort of fun. As a rule I never camp out for anything - nothing is worth it so much I waste my time in a line with a bunch of strangers, and in the cold, too. But with my son, and a lot of older people who were bitten by the Wii bug, the wait was bearable. We chatted, and joked, and shared our thoughts about video games and the Wii. Two people offered my son a chair to sit in, but he held steadfast standing next to me.

Around 9:00 an employee entered the store, but stopped to let us know they'd be out around 9:30 to talk to us. The store wouldn't open until 10:00. UGH. I called my husband and he said, where are you in line? When I told him second, he said to stick it out. Easy for him to say (and who is playing right now while I'm blogging?) while he's at home and I'm standing outside with a bored and cold six year old for a game I'll never have time to play. Oh well. He did offer to pick up our son so he wouldn't have to stay out in the cold for another hour. My son decided to stay.

Finally at 9:30 two employees came out and handed out vouchers. They were good from 10:00 until 12:00, at which time any Wiis set aside would be made available to other customers. They only had 18 in stock. There were about 12 of us in line. We had our Wii! I took our son home and came back about 10:00 and picked it up. When I was in line waiting to be let into the store, and waiting in line to pick up the Wii, a few people walked in looking for a Wii to buy. It's just a stupid video game but I had this sense of accomplishment knowing I found one and they didn't. Ha. Petty little life I lead, right?

Anyway, we now have a Wii. Our life is complete. We've already held a family meeting to set the ground rules and I was very proud of my son for setting reasonable time limits we would impose on him. We also came up with the idea that he can earn extra Wii time if he does things to help out around the house. He had a hard time thinking of things he could do, since we haven't really asked him to do chores yet, but I had a nice long list. He's already earned 10 extra minutes by putting away his clean clothes. We have to work on keeping them folded when they get into the drawer but at least he's doing it. Yay! There is some good to the Wii. I hope.

Time for me to go play tennis, or bowling or something. Stay tuned for another blog post on "Wii Shoulder." Maybe it will distract me from my shin splints.