I woke up this morning excited about the prospect of a brand new day. I grabbed the kids and we raced to the mall so I could get my (reserved) iPhone4. We arrived at 10 and the (reserved) line wrapped around the corner, down the hall, past the restrooms and the parking exit, into the very bowels of the mall…then outside into the steaming sunlight…back inside to another utility corridor, and finally emptying back into the mall near a place I’d never even seen before. There were hundreds of people in line. Wide eyed. Lost.

Steve Jobs is satan.

I took the kids for an ice cream. My oldest was willing to stick it out, since my new phone meant she gets my 3gs. But time is the most valuable asset we have. And there’s no phone in the world worth waiting for AT&T to remotely process a billion people today. So we left.

Five hours later, I’m back. Because Steve Jobs is satan and one should know their enemy intimately. Plus, my kid is really looking forward to this. Who am I kidding, I’m doing this for me. To protect her from Jobs.

So here I am sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor with about 100 other people using a range of Apple devices. And it turns out that when they do talk, people who love Apple things talk about nothing but Apple things the same way some people in Social Media talk about nothing but Social Media. It’s weird. And creepy. I mean, who stands in line at the mall at 4 a.m. for an electronic device? Followers of satan, that’s who.

Before all you Droid and Blackberry people get all giddy – next to an iPhone, your phone is still bush, but this Apple experience is definitely pressing my loyalty.

There’s a huge roar from the people in the “standby” line every time a “reserved” person walks up, sees all the people in this line and says ‘screw this.’

If you lift up the hair behind Steve Jobs’ left ear, you can see three sixes.

I have about 2 hours to go, I think.

***

Jim Mitchem

Dreams I'll Never See
When Advertising is Evil: BP and the Gulf Coast

Jim Mitchem

Writer. Father to daughters. Husband. Ad man. Raised by wolves. @jmitchem on twitter. First novel, Minor King, out now.

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