Apple Turnover

We know how to relax on vacation. Instead of walking down the street, down a flight of stairs and parking ourselves in beach chairs- we decided to embark to South Coast Plaza, the mega of all malls, on the day Apple released their new G3 Iphone. We had some required shopping to do anyway, and decided it would be fun to check out the hoopla at the Apple store.

With Coffee Bean lattes in hand, we strolled over and giggled at the throng of people that had lined up at 3:30 in the morning. A lowly Apple employee was passing out bottles of Smart Water, and told us that the line was only 2.5 hours long. Matt laughed and started to walk away, but my competitive spirit kicked in and I ran to the back of the line.

"What are you doing?" my husband asked.

"Look, would you rather go shopping with me, or wait here in hopes you may actually get a new phone?" I asked. (feeling guilty that the reason he needed a new phone was because I accidentally dropped his on the tiled kitchen floor).

So we waved goodbye to Matt, and headed off to shop. And shop. And shop. And eat lunch. And walk around. And walk around some more. The line took FIVE HOURS to get through, and Matt would die if he knew I was telling you this because he's ashamed he had that much time to burn.

The whole thing was pretty interesting. People showed up in their Empire Strikes Back t-shirts- and everyone was very chatty. Matt stood in front of a lighting designer for a local theatre, and a computer programmer- both friends that had taken the day off work for this glorious event. One guy was savvy, and sold his spot in line about halfway through for $50.

Once Matt made it into the store, I dragged the kids along- we wanted to see what all the ruckus was about. Because of fire laws- there was an army of Apple employees manning the door, and they personally escorted you in when your time came up. We saw one young girl exclaim that she had to use the ladies room- and a chagrined Apple guy had to personally walk her through the mall and wait outside to make sure she could get back in. Crazy.

While Matt was haggling through all of the options, I played Dora and Ratatouille on the kids computers- while giggling at the crowd. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of young 20 year old guys, with ratty t-shirts and converse sneakers. They kept calling their friends on their new phones, and I heard more than one say:

"Dude, guess where I am right now? In the fucking Apple Store, man. G3 is awesome."

Sigh. It almost made me wish for my stuff to come out of storage so I could rejoin the land of responsibility.