Black Friday

As most of you know, I'm not a shopper.  At all.  I go out and shop when I know I need something, or for someone's birthday, but even that is heavily pre-planned.  I don't get off on sales, nor do I feel that "rush" some women talk about when they've found the perfect pair of shoes.  But, I heard of a crazy sale on The Office DVDs, seasons 1, 2, & 3 at Target, starting this morning at 6:00am & decided to check it out.

I had no idea what to expect.  If I'm not a shopper on a normal day, you can only imagine my cluelessness about this day of insanity.  My dear friend Ken decided to brave the trip with me, because he said he was feeling like taking a walk on the wild side.  (He, too, was a Black Friday virgin.)  We live about 5 minutes away from Target, so we piled in the car at 5:50am and made our way over to what would be the most crazed thing either of us had ever witnessed.

I almost took the camera, but then decided against it last minute.  Too bad, because then I would've been able to show you what we saw when we pulled up.  The parking lot was entirely full, and the line to get in wrapped all the way around the left side of the building, back to the grassy field that sits behind the store.  Ken & I just looked at each other and laughed, because we were in utter disbelief.  How early did these people start camping out?  Really?  Just so you could get a good deal on a television?  Wow.  I guess I'm just cut from a different mold, because I value sleep way more than I do a good bargain.  We lingered in the parking lot because we didn't feel like hiking back to the most-likely muddy field (it rained overnight), and ended up getting inside the store around 6:15am.  People were literally running around the store, splitting up with the people they came with & then communicating via cell phone ("I'm on aisle E-9 - I repeat E-9!"), navigating their baskets like they were in Nascar - it was unbelievable.  One woman even clipped the back of my heel, because apparently, I wasn't moving fast enough down the main thoroughfare of the store.  It was almost like a movie ... Ken and I were just moseying over to the DVD department, and literally everyone else around us was in warp speed & blurry.  All of this, and Target forgot to flip the A/C on ... it was stifling inside this store.  Or, maybe it just seemed that way since there about 700 more people in there than usual.

I juked, ducked, and slid my way past enough carts to grab the three things I had gone there for.  I also had to grab some sugar, because we were out at home, and I hadn't been able to have my coffee yet.  (All of this, on no coffee!  Gah!)  Getting from the DVD department over to the grocery section was like a game of Frogger.  After I found the sugar, we made our way to the express check-out lanes, which were thankfully quite short.  The cashiers had their game-faces on, and had the people in front of me checked out & on their way in record time.  Within 2 minutes of getting in line, I was done, paid for, and on my way back out the door.

Whew.  The whole thing seemed surreal to me & Ken once we were back out in the open.  We looked at each other like, "what just happened?".  All we could do was laugh a little more, and discuss how scared we were at times.  The one item we saw everyone clutching was Guitar Hero.  I don't know how discounted this puppy was, but it was apparently enough to get everyone & their Mother out to Target this morning.  The people who had one were holding on to it like it was the Holy Grail, and I saw several people in line with nothing but Guitar Hero.  I guess there will be a lot of happy kids out there this Christmas, but I can't say I would've had the dedication to do that for my kid.  Sometimes, kids need to learn there are limits to what we can buy, especially if it requires Mommy standing in line at 3:00am, in the rain, by herself.  (You think Aaron would ever do this?!  Ha!  Notice KEN was with me this morning.) Not gonna happen.

So, I ended up getting three seasons of one of my all-time favorite tv shows for $38.00.  Not bad!

I'm glad it was relatively quick, though.  The bizarre, anxious energy that was rampant through the store was almost enough to scare me into never trying this again.  Ken called it estrogen, and he may have been right since 90% of the humans around us were female.  For now, I will close, enjoy my coffee [takes another blissful sip], and maybe pop in a DVD until Zach wakes up.  I will post pics from Thanksgiving later on today.  Need to go recover mentally at this point ...

Peace & pastries.