The Things We Do For Love

“Like walkin’ in the rain and the snow and there’s nowhere to go . . .”

Sorry. Everything’s a friggin song cue for me and I loved that stupid song way back when.

Let me preface this by saying that I know I indulge my daughter. I know her father indulges her to an even more outrageous degree, but I also know that my daughter is pretty level headed, responsible, appreciative and an all around good and funny kid, as well as great, if not expensive, company in a shoe store. I know she has too much and is it because I had too little? I doubt it. I have no reasons and I don’t think I need any so let’s just get that out there, shall we? I know.

Secondly, we have more gaming systems between my house and the land yacht than Paris Hilton has boyfriends that used to be her most recent BFF’s boyfriend. Nevertheless, the Ringlet decided when the Nintendo Wii came out that possessing one was necessary for her survival. I thought it was merely redundant, but I looked into it anyway and found that it was something new, something fairly revolutionary in gaming and it was a gaming system that would get you up off your kiester and could actually cause you to break a sweat. Now I was interested.

But I wasn’t tremendously interested in shelling out the money for yet another box upon which to play games. So I made a deal. She saves enough money for the entire system, extras and all, and I’ll then split the cost with her 50/50. She agreed quickly. I showed her what it was gonna cost her. She paled considerably, but didn’t back down. A deal was a deal. We shook on it and I promptly forgot about the whole business. I know my child, you see. There was no way in the world she was gonna save that kind of money when there were cool useless things at the school store to be had, nifty new games for her Gameboy just calling her name, and a new stuffed animal that she had a name for before it even made it through our front door. I had apparently forgotten about the money she managed to save for her first pair of heelies, but still, that was a lot less than the kind of cash it was going to take to pull this off. I relaxed. I was safe.

Months came and went and she saved her allowance, pestered for chores, baked muffins to sell to me for her dad’s lunch, helped her father, saved, saved, saved, fished around for loose change, and in general did all the things kids do when they need money and can’t get a job at 7-11 at the age of 9. They mooch, but at least it’s productive mooching. Closer and closer she came to the required amount and as she got closer, she asked me to start checking on where we could buy one and what they cost now (like it was going to get better). I checked and I found out prices and I also found out that there wasn’t a Wii to be had outside of getting hacked into tiny little financial chunks by the scam artists on line. She would have to wait.

And she saved and she scrimped and she mooched and she didn’t spend a cent of her vacation cruise money she had been given and she came to me a week ago and said “I have the money. I have more than enough so can I get the Wii now?” I gulped. I started making calls.

Not a Wii in town. Nothing. Anywhere.

But.

Toys R Us was getting a shipment in a week. They would be getting no more than 39 total Wii systems, no you couldn’t reserve one and it would be first come, first served and if you didn’t get one, it would be back to waiting for another undetermined length of the time for the next shipment, tough chit.

I mulled it over. I talked to her Mr. Ringie. I made my decision. Please keep in mind that I have never waited in line for concert tickets. I have never gotten somewhere the night before, armed with a sleeping bag and a flashlight and a cooler in order that I might get a ticket, any ticket, so that I might be in attendance at a sold out show. I’ve never even gone to the mall for the midnight madness shopping that now and then crops up around the holidays. I never punched out anybody over a cabbage patch doll. Ever. I thought it was stupid. I still do.

But I had spent the last year watching a nine year old kid slowly but surely build up a fund in her little piggy bank with an eye toward something she wanted. She was looking ahead and she was resisting impulse, keeping that eye directed firmly toward the ultimate goal and I was bound and determined that a kid that young who had tried that hard to earn money to buy something that expensive all by herself and had not once asked me to “just go on and get it for me” was not going to be disappointed if there was something I could do about it, short of holding the Wii delivery guy at gunpoint.

So when the alarm clock went off at 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning, I quietly crawled out of bed, quickly got dressed, made a thermos of coffee, grabbed the iPod, a bag chair and a book and out the door I went.

I was first in line at the Toys-R-Us and I am here to tell you that the look on my daughter’s face when she met me at the door (hours later, thank you) with her share of the cost of the Wii clutched in her hand, when she happily handed it over to me, was well worth the 4-plus hours spent in a canvas chair in front of the Toys-R-Us front doors not drinking all my coffee because I realized only after the fact that there was no bathroom available and I would have peeed down my own leg before losing my place in line.

But I can also tell you that the next time she gets a wild hair and saves up all her money for something you just can’t pick up off any old shelf, it’s going to be HER alarm clock that goes off at 5:00 a.m.