Midnight Madness

So where were you last night at midnight?  Curled up in your bed in the Land of Nod.  Well, so was I up until 11pm when i was woken to go on an adventure with my teenage son.  It was his first time so he was super excited and i was more than agreeable in order to make him happy and to up my  super cool mother kudos.  He even had a shower before we left (bonus with stinky teenage boys).

So where did we go?

Shopping, i hear you say.  Well not exactly since the goods were already pre-ordered and pre-paid  but yes we did go to our local shopping plaza to pick up the goods, at midnight. 

Now this is where i might actually lose some readers and gain a few "tutt tutt's, you shouldn't be encouraging him".   We went to the midnight launch of the a long awaited next sequel in the gaming series called Battlefield, and I'm not sorry. So There!

There it is, the countdown clock.  We arrived with 8 minutes and 18 seconds to go.  So why such a crazy time.   As soon as they are taken home, most are loaded onto the server.  If every game purchased in the world (we are talking millions of copies) went on at the same time the server would crash.  This recently happened with Grand Theft Auto and some buyers took 3 days to gain logon after purchase.  Not Cool.   There is alot of pocket money spent on these games and players are passionate. So the sale times are staggered around the world and in Australia it was 12.01 this morning.

Am i being too defensive?  Probably, since the only people who read me are pretty cool and very understanding of my situation.  Its important to me that Tom does what other kids are doing and going to midnight launches is a very cool thing to do.   The thing that confused me was where were all the other Mums and Dads.   There were quite a few young boys there (12-16) that were unsupervised.  Were they all gathered somewhere having coffee and i didn't get the invite?   There did appear to be a few cars outside but all vacant.  Perhaps, and I'm hoping, they took the opportunity to do their shopping for groceries while they waited.  Yes, we have 24hr shopping here.

Tom is actually in there somewhere, i think his ticket was No. 36.   The festivities started around 10pm and they had plenty of consoles set up for multiplayer games.   A bit of fun in a group.  That would be socialising.  Yes, you can see Christmas decorations in October which is madness.  I could see Tom talking to strangers in line.  That would be people, not his Mum and Dad and that's a good thing.

The following young girls were very busy throwing lollies and cheap promotional toys at the line of boys and men while they waited.  I think i saw one girl in there.  I know that their shorts were rather short but to tell you the truth i don't think anyone was paying much attention.  I asked Tom if he thought the girls were pretty and he said "Huh"!  Phew!! looks like i can leave that minefield for a while.

Please don't send me messages about sexual exploitation of young girls.  It was a bit a fun and when i asked them if i could take their photo they rushed to grab their props in order to look the part.  

Tom, leaving with his booty.

The Booty - with some pretty cool dog tags.  

He started playing around 12.45am  and had finished the game by 6am on a relatively easy setting.   The beauty of these games is that you can play them over and over on different levels of difficulty and then you can go online and play multiplayer with people all over the world including the boy next door.   I figure that with him starting a full time job shortly, this will be one of the last all nighters so i wasn't making a noise about it.  Neither was he, headphones are a blessing.

We have this picture on our fridge.  We call them Aspie Headphones because they stop the talking as well.  

Thanks for Living In The Land of Oz