Black Friday

Several years ago my wife, Sheree, and I set our alarm for 3:30am to get to Wal Mart and secure a sunshine care bear. Every year since then it has been our tradition to join the crowds on Black Friday and shop for bargains. My mother always goes and is really the leader of the group. Many times my sister, Laura, will join us and that is always a hoot! This year my new Sister-in-Law, Keri, joined us and we saw my other sister-in-law, Penny, at one of the stores. The real shocker is that mom sent dad out on a 6:00am mission to Lowe's and he went. He saw someone waiting in the half mile long line he knew and commented that he only got up this early to chase something with a tail or feathers (pop is a hunter).

I am certain my experiences are similar to what most experience, but I wanted to share a couple of highlights from the day. Let me start by saying that ladies you truly are a "different breed". Women take that shopping "stuff" seriously. You see them all in their baseball caps and jogging suits with sales adds and papers protruding from their purses. By the way, my wife tells me you ladies wear the caps when you don't take time to fix your hair. I hear ladies dispatching orders to others in their shopping group like a General in a war zone. "You go get that $15.00 DVD player, you go get those floor rockers on sale, you go get those towels on sale, and on and on for as many are in the group. I looked around and saw men spotted throughout the sea of ladies and all of us had this "what am I doing in this war zone look on our faces."

Speaking of towels, like a good soldier I was dispatched for an item and as I stood the lone man in the checkout line while my wife and mother remained back on the front lines, I saw ladies and cashiers up and down the line flipping through sale papers to "honor the competitor's add" and then my attention was drawn to the ladies in front of me. I listened to these two seasoned troops with buggies overflowing (They had to have spent $300.00 at least) complaining and wanting to speak to the manager because they paid $3.00 for a towel that was advertised to have been $1.50. After 10 minutes of listening to this I started to just walk up and give the ladies a dollar and a half. My wife says I should be glad I didn't.

I was trying to be polite and let a lady with a full buggy go in front of me as I was only carrying a single item. Well, there was this lady on up in years who really must have been battle ground experienced. She breathed in heavily but in short breaths and when she breathed out her severe under bite was evident. After breathing out her jaw kind of moved in a small circular motion. She looked at me and in her most stern voice with her jaw making circles and said "GO AHEAD!" Tying to be polite and oblivious to her anger at the time for me letting the other lady go ahead, I said, " Oh No ma'am, you go ahead and smiled at her." I was being very sincere and trying to show her some courtesy. I thought a short polite conversation might be nice so I said, "It is kind of useless to be in a hurry this morning isn't it ma'am." She then responded, "I said Go Ahead son you are wasting time!" I did as ordered and moved promptly ahead and thought, "This is really serious business".

All in all it was a wonderful day spent with my wife and mother. They allowed me to be a gentleman and let them off at the door and go park the car 2 miles away (I am exaggerating about the distance but the parking lots were full). I heard some very sound advice from one lady as she said to her shopping mate, "If you'll use it, get it, if you won't...don't" You can't get advice like that just anywhere.

In closing, I have done this Black Friday thing several years and I do not know what the news media will report, but I can report that business was strong at the stores I visited today. I also thought that if we truly want Bin Laden we should just run a sale in Afghanistan on towels, sheets, and such. We then give ladies paid airfare over and I promise they will comb those mountains for the bargains and kill anything that gets in their way.

Happy Thanksgiving all!