A couple days before Christmas a miracle happened. We walked in the local Fred Meyer’s store and my wife took off to do the shopping and I do the familiar check out what’s happening in the electronic section. I always look in the locked cage and expect to see neither the Wii or PS3. Last year it was the Xbox 360.

And to my surprise I saw the black box with the Spider-man font reading: Playstation 3.

My first thought was: they wouldn’t put an empty box in a locked cage, would they? Other customers were milling about walking past the same glass cage as me, looking in and seeing what I was seeing. One guy looked especially interested in the cage but didn’t indicate what he was looking at.

Figuring time was limited, I turned and went to get my wife.

“They got one PS3. We better hurry.”

She looked as surprised as me. I wondered if by the time we returned to the counter which had a line of people doing Christmas shopping if somebody else would have already claimed the sole PS3.

It was still in the glass cage and I walked over to the customer counter and asked the store employee, “Is that a PS3 or just an empty box?” Yeah, it was a weak question, but I didn’t believe they actually had one available for sale. I didn’t believe we’d see one in a retail store until March/April 2006. Especially not the 60GB version with WiFi.

He answered: “No, that’s the system.”

I told him we wanted it and he whipped out the keys and opened the cage. The guy who was eyeing the cage a few minutes earlier looked at us and asked if we were getting the PS3. Beaming, I nodded.

He replied that he was there to buy some games because the two PS3 games he bought sucked. I asked him what two games those were (so we didn’t make the same mistake) and I didn’t get his answer. Not hearing, I asked him to repeat and I still didn’t hear him clearly. Didn’t want to annoy him by asking a third time, so just let it go. Think one of the games mentioned was Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire which might be the worst title reviewed at launch. Definitely wasn’t interested in that one.

We paid for the PS3 and then took it to our office to put in a bigger box and wrap so not to telegraph to our children the contents. We saved this until the second to last gift out kids opened. The last gift opened: the PS3 game Resistance: Fall of Man.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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