Foundations of Story Blog 2: Regret

Most of my regrets wouldn’t be fit for this blog: They’re either personal, or regrets for things I didn’t do, but one memorable, easy-to-talk about regret that works somewhat well with the Davis story format is my decision to go to Toys-R-Us on the night of Black Friday 2009. This was not exactly Black Friday, but Thursday night, where all the stores are open late so people can take advantage of the deals early.

My main impetus (I suppose this would be the “main character” part of Davis’s format) for going to Toys-R-Us was to get New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a game that came out the past Tuesday. It was likely going to be one of the biggest gifts of the season, so I wanted to get my hands on it early. That, combined with my like for being in “real-life adventures” (and excursion to a popular store on Black Friday counts as one of these) mad me eager to go and experience the craziness, ending with me triumphantly holding the game in my hands. I did end up holding the game, but I wasn’t quite as enthused as I imagined I would be.

So I asked my mother to take me (I didn’t drive, and don’t to this day), and we drove there. It didn’t take very long, though I think it may have taken awhile to park. Since the lot in front of the large toy store was probably full. We parked and walked up to the entrance, and saw a long line of people coming out of it, extending far back. Far back. Out of the complex surrounding the store and into some random alley. This was trouble coming, and we should have known. But no, we got in line and chatted with a few people about the situation and what they were getting. We waited for awhile until they opened the store, and the line moved quickly inside. It never moved quickly again.

This is the crisis stage of the story. For around three hours we waited there, slowly proceeding in line in directions that took us all around the store – the line weaved a strange path through it. We talked to each other and other people, but eventually this got old, and we just had to wait. I was confident that the line would speed up, but it never did. We thought about leaving at one point, but we didn’t want to have gone there just for nothing, so we stuck around. By the time the line ended and I got the game, we were all tired and bitter, especially my mother (rightfully so, of course). We took our one game and got out of there. I guess around here was when I got insight and realized that maybe we should have left early, because the game was going to be so huge anyway that they probably pressed a million copies of it and they wouldn’t have run out by the time I would have gone to the store the next day. I didn’t even get to play the game until the next day anyway. I never really got any affirmation or resolution to this; they were just logical thoughts. The next time I went out on Black Friday, my mom did not come with me. And it still kind sucked.