7:31 PM — A chubby twenty-something joined the line, introducing himself to his friends as “Tinolin” from “Gorefiend”. His shirt was covered in Oreo crumbs, except for the rectangle on his belly where he rests his keyboard.

9:58 PM — A homeless man walked down the line asking each person for change and no one gave him any, despite the fact that he was a Vietnam vet who had at one time participated in real modern warfare.

10:10 PM — A seventeen-year-old boy drank Diet Mountain Dew.

10:23 PM — A man in his fifties in the back of the line hummed  “Ricki Don’t Lose That Number”, prompting the man in his forties eleven people in front of him to hum it as well. For the people in between, it was like being inside a broken stereo stuck on a shitty song.

11:43 PM — A frazzled mother who had been in line for over an hour asked the two teenagers in place behind her to “save her place” while she “checked on her baby in the car.”

11:59 PM — A fourteen-year-old girl looked at her reflection in the game shop window and understood her holding a place on line for that handsome new boy from Algebra class will not win his affection and that maybe her mother was right about lowering her standards.

12:14 AM — After learning the game shop had cleared its stock, a nineteen-year-old college freshman returned to his dorm with his hoodie pulled up. This will spoil his three-month effort to embed with the cool guys three rooms down. He will spend another night talking to his roommate –a small, pale, balding young man — who no doubt will be sleeping naked and without blankets.