Stratego

Every day here at home, whether in Las Vegas or Henderson, or hopefully Boulder City one of these days to walk around again, I look for little pieces of life. Sometimes I like absorbing an epic arc by what I'm reading or if I briefly meet a particularly charismatic person, but most of the time, I like the little things. I don't need much to be satisfied.

During Black Friday, Meridith found out that Toys R Us was selling "ABBA: You Can Dance" for Wii. She's wanted it for a long time, even though she doesn't have a Wii, but that's coming soon, possibly from Best Buy, which advertises a black Wii with "Wii Sports" included, for $119. Normally, "ABBA: You Can Dance" is $39.99, so she had to grab this. Since she doesn't transfer money into her checking account all that often, and I wasn't sure how long this sale would last, I decided to order it. It wasn't for a surprise since she already knew about it. Besides, I eventually want to see what it's like, too.

$8.98 was an online-only price, but it could be picked up at a Toys R Us in our general vicinity, which meant the one on West Sunset Road in Henderson. Yesterday, I received the e-mail from Toys R Us that said it was ready for pickup, Dad printed it out today at his school, and he, Meridith and I went to Toys R Us late this afternoon since I was the only one who could pick it up, since they required not only the printed e-mail, but also a photo ID.

A woman was in front of me when we walked in, trying to figure out with a Toys R Us employee behind the counter how she was going to get the huge box of something she bought to her car. The employee had a hand truck with her, which tells you the challenge that was looming. Plus, the employee obviously wouldn't be there with the hand truck in tow once the woman got home.

But that wasn't the piece of life I found interesting. When I got to the counter and was waiting for someone to take my printed e-mail and check my ID, a man was next to me with four boxes of the board game Stratego, which I've only ever heard of. I've never played it and probably never will. When I was a kid, Guess Who, Life, and Connect Four were pretty much it. Every other game we had was either on the Nintendo or the Game Boy.

He put the boxes on the counter and explained that he had bought the game for his Boy Scout troop, but it wasn't the original Stratego. The employee helping him said it looked like the original since it said "The Classic Board Game" on the box, but he explained that it didn't have the same number of pieces that the original had. It had more. And then he went on to explain some intricacies of the new game versus what the original had, evidenced by one of the boxes that he had opened previously to check out the game, and I didn't catch any of that.

The employee helping me said that it would be 15 minutes before I could pick up the ABBA game, and so Meridith and I walked to the video game section so she could see if there were any more copies of the ABBA game, and there were none, which is lucky, since we apparently got the last copy, at least for now at that location. Then she asked the guy at the video game counter if they had any more Wiis, and they didn't.

Back at the Guest Services counter, which is nearly pressed against the entrance doors, the employee had a large, clear plastic bag containing the game, and first thought it belonged to the woman who had left with the huge box, but finally she turned around, saw us there, and knew that it belonged to us. I didn't mind that she might have momentarily forgotten, as long as it was there and as long as Meridith now has it.

Before we left, the Stratego guy was standing behind another customer who was also at the counter, holding four tin boxes of the 50th Anniversary edition of Stratego. That must have been the one he was looking for, and now he could exchange the not-original-Strategos for those ones. Now those Boy Scouts can know what real Stratego is.