I admit it…proudly. I have, up until this year, been a Black Friday Virgin. Never gone before, never had a desire to. But something entirely unexpected happened this week to change all that. Derek actually found something in one of the sale ads that caught his eye. Please understand…Derek does NOT shop. So when something in an ad actually peaks his interest, action is required. Not surprisingly, his interest was in the Menards ad. For those unfamiliar with the Midwest, Menards is a hardware store. What a shock. Derek was intrigued by a few fabulously priced tidbits that he thought would make good Christmas gifts and actually expressed, if not an actual desire, a willingness to go to the store on Black Friday of all days in order to secure these treasures at a spectacular price. For those unfamiliar with the origins of the term “Black Friday” I should explain that this designation commemorates what is, for many stores, the first day of the year that their books are actually in “The Black”, meaning, they make a nice tidy profit. The idea is to lure you into the store with a few great sales and once they have you there, entice you to spend your children’s college funds on Christmas gifts.
I strongly suspected this was all nothing but a lot of talk on Derek’s part because Derek doesn’t like to go shopping…ever, let alone at 5:30 in the morning. We went to bed Thanksgiving night with me fully expecting to sleep in until 8:00 am. That’s when the unexpected happened; Colt, who is presently working at radio shack while waiting to marry Michelle and go into the army, had to be at work by 4:00 a.m. and as usual, he had not planned ahead and had no clean socks. Socks being a dire and urgent need, he thought nothing of tromping into our room at 3:30 in the morning to commandeer some of his father’s socks. I hate it when he does that. It makes me regret that I didn’t drown him when he was too young to struggle. Sadly, once I was awake, there was no going back to sleep. I tried…really I did. But by 4:30 I knew I was done for the night and started to get up. To my amazement, I heard Derek’s voice beside me in the dark! “Where are we going”? I was perplexed…“Ummm….to the bathroom”? He popped out of bed and informed me that we were going to Menards! If you know Derek at all I’m sure you are currently thinking that Menards must have been selling bars of solid gold for a nickel a piece in order to lure him out of bed, but the truth is, it was pretty mundane stuff!
I have an adventurous spirit, and this foray into Black Friday seemed like the perfect holiday adventure. I jumped up and got dressed and by 5:00 am Derek and I were pulling into the parking lot of Menards. There was a line, but not an unmanageable one, certainly not the nightmarish lines that I have seen on the news where mobs of crazed shoppers rushed forward and practically knocked down buildings. Derek dropped me off with instructions to secure a place in line while he searched for a parking place. We were actually having fun! There was a lighthearted mood of anticipation amongst the shoppers and people chatted with whoever was next to them in line. This all seemed pretty easy. A few minutes in line and we would save a bundle because of the great prices. Then the elderly woman in front of us mentioned some nonsense about only another hour to wait. That was impossible. The store opened at 5:30. I mentioned this to her and she firmly corrected me. Seems Derek got the times wrong and the store didn’t actually open until 6:00 am. Still okay…we were there to have a fun little adventure. We could wait an extra half hour…in a light fall jacket…in 39 degree weather…it would be fun…really…
By 5:30 I realized that I had burned all of my spare calories shivering and probably should have eaten breakfast before we left. I offered to wait in line while Derek drove to Burger King for some much needed French Toast Sticks but he was feeling gallant and said I could go get the food while he waited. I headed across the parking lot to get the car and looking around, realized that if I forfeited my parking place the nearest one I would be able to get upon my return was at our house. I headed back to our spot in line determined to stick it out even though I was starting to feel queasy, but Derek insisted on walking to the McDonalds just down the road. My hero! Feeling renewed and invigorated after some hot chocolate and a McGriddle, we faced the final twenty minutes or so with renewed enthusiasm. By now the line ran right around the parking lot and out to the street. The woman in front of us asked if this was our first store of the morning. FIRST? It was 5:45! How many stores could we possibly have been to already?? Turns out JC Penney’s opened at 4:00! The crowd was starting to stir restlessly. About five minutes to six we noticed that there were a number of people gathering in the parking lot directly in front of the entrance to the store and that’s when things started to get ugly.
The shoppers who had been waiting in line for two hours started crowding towards the door, fearful that these latecomers might actually get into the store before them. Eyes became wild at the thought that these interlopers might get to the $2.00 leather gloves before they could. Comments started flying from the shoppers in line. “Hey, go to the back of the line, we’ve been waiting here for hours”. Fierce inquiries were thrown to the security guards standing at the entrance. “You’re not gonna let them in are you”. The crowd kept pushing in with more fervor. I’m REALLY claustrophobic and this was NOT entertaining! This was a BAD adventure! People in line literally started chanting “Go to the back, go to the back”. Derek and I started laughing. This was unbelievable. At 6:00 a.m. the doors opened. We were swept up in a mad surge. The line crowd cheered as we flooded past the group of parking lot crashers being held at bay by security. As we burst through the glass doors in a wave, Derek was literally swept away from me and we were separated. I tried over and over again to reach a cart but each time I reached for one someone else would pull it from my short little fingertips. I was really only interested in the cart as a possible defensive weapon if things got any uglier. A tall woman finally took mercy on me and pulled a cart towards me. As I wrapped my fingers around the side of the cart, a man grabbed the handle and jerked the cart out of my hand. I gave up and headed in the Direction I thought Derek might have been swept. Just as I finally caught sight of him, I heard a thunderous voice behind me bellowing “keep it moving, keep it moving”! A split second later I was slammed to one side by a really big woman who literally body checked me out of her way with her shoulder. I raced towards Derek and hid under his arm as the crowd surged past us. He’s big. I can do that. He laughed at me and huddled me close to him. From there we successfully found all of the treasures that he had on his list and headed over to the paint department. The aisles were a virtual sea of writhing, shopping humanity. We just kept laughing at the insanity of it all. There were a few tempting looking deals that I wanted to check out, so Derek headed towards the quickly growing line at the checkout so our wait would be a little shorter. I spotted a really great deal on reed diffuser gift sets and picked one off the shelf to test the scratch and sniff sticker on the front of the package. Having sampled one, I picked up another in my other hand. As I sniffed the second sticker a woman actually snatched the other one out of my hand, glared at me and stomped off, apparently in search of other things to grab out of unsuspecting shopper’s hands. At that I knew I was done with Black Friday forever and started crowd surfing my way back to the registers where I finally landed right back under Derek’s arm where it was safe and sound. While at least 75% of the shoppers there were cheery, polite people, the other 25% were certifiably insane. I would prefer not to shop with them again…ever.
After Menards, Derek decided to take me to Target. I think it was his way of apologizing for the severe trauma I suffered at Menards. Unsurprisingly, Target seemed unwilling to demean themselves with anything as crass as a Black Friday sale, so it was relatively peaceful there. We found a couple of boxes of ornaments and a few other tidbits and hit the register in record time. We watched as the clerk rang up our purchases, two little dollar books and the two boxes of ornaments…Derek cleared his throat. “Ummm…those ornaments had better be made from real elves. The clerk and I both looked at him trying to understand the thought process behind the comment as he tapped his index finger on the display screen. The register indicated that we now owed Target $517.00. Yes, the ornaments HAD better be made of real elves. The harried (and obviously new) clerk summoned a supervisor as Derek tried to look sincere and patient instead of pointing and laughing. A lot of button pushing and debate ensued, the upshot of which was that the customer ahead of us had apparently not been run up correctly and so her payment hadn’t registered. Target had just donated $500 dollars worth of merchandise to one happy shopper. Merry Christmas to you lady!
Derek and I decided that while our foray into Black Friday had been entertaining, we would be happier never doing it again and headed home to sort through our spoils of war.
As Black Friday was also my sister’s birthday (no reflection on you Jeannie) I had arranged to spend the afternoon with her. She and Jess and I had lunch as Jazz downtown. A great Cajun place with surprisingly good alligator for being in Nebraska (it’s so hard to get good alligator in the Midwest). After lunch we stopped at a quaint Christmas shop in the Old Market called Tannenbaum. In a fit of nostalgia, I had been pining away for a German decoration that we had when I was a child. It’s called a Christmas Pyramid. It has balsa wood blades above a diorama and candles around it. You light the candles and the warm air pushes the blades causing the carousel to spin. The one I grew up with had eventually succumbed to old age and I was thinking how nice it would be to have another when we found a nice little one tucked away in a display cabinet in the shop. I eagerly made the purchase and also purchased candles so that we could try it out when we got home. After our shopping, we headed out to see New Moon. It was significantly better than its predecessor, Twilight. Frankly it would have been hard for it to be worse. After an hour and a half of feeling like pedophiles for ogling the 17 year old actor who plays Jacob (a werewolf) we headed home to put up the Christmas tree. I have decided that I will have surgery every year just before Christmas so other people will have to put all of my Christmas decorations for me. This is a good plan. While Jess and I were prepping the tree and sorting through ornaments, Jeannie decided to get my newly acquired German treasure set up. Jess made some flippant comment about how only the German’s would make a Christmas decoration that combined balsa wood and fire. Not two minutes later Jeannie howled something that sounded suspiciously like “FIRE”. The acrid smell of burning wood hit my nose as I looked over to see my pretty Christmas Pyramid turn into a spinning flame thrower. As we stood staring at it in horror, Jess grabbed it and tossed in into the kitchen sink. Here’s the interesting thing, while the pyramid made no mention of being for decoration only, I noticed later that the back of the box of candles cautioned. “These candles are for decoration purposes only. We do not recommend lighting these candles. If you wish to light these candles, do not burn for longer than 90 minutes. Really? Decorative candles that you aren’t supposed to burn? Why would you waste a wick on a candle that you’re not supposed to burn?
Once the furor of the moment died down it seemed reasonable for us to disband before we managed to burn down the entire house. Thus ended our most interesting Black Friday ever.
