When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.
- Elayne Boosler
Like most of us, I’ve watched the news reports about people getting ready for Black Friday, queuing up as if Super Bowl tickets and/or a hot, naked weekend with the Swedish Bikini Team were the prizes at stake. The chance to buy a stereo or a toaster oven first thing on the day after Thanksgiving is something that apparently, in some people, stirs the competitive juices in the same way that used to cause cavemen to lay in wait for a four-legged meat wagon to come sidling by.
Here in Portland, there were people camped outside a Best Buy (among other places) for two days. Yeah, they spent their Thanksgiving Day in tents on a sidewalk outside an electronics store for reasons I can’t begin to understand. I can’t imagine what would possess someone to camp outside a store in anticipation of…well, no one really knew what. Best Buy’s after-Thanksgiving sales circular didn’t even come out until yesterday, so the folks camping out didn’t even know what they were staking a claim on. They just knew that they’d be first in line for whatever awaited them once the doors to the Kingdom were thrown open.
Call me naive, but what is it that would possess a person to camp out for two days in order to be the first to enter a store at oh-dark-thirty? What’s available then that couldn’t be had later that day or even a days later? What could possibly justify camping on a sidewalk for two days? Why would a person give up celebrating Thanksgiving with friends and family (unless you have none of either) in order to be granted to privilege of buying a laptop or a big-screen TV?
I don’t get Black Friday, but then I’m OK with that; I generally do most of my Christmas shopping online. At 5:00 this morning, I was fast asleep. I can’t think of anything that could have convinced me to stand in line outside a store in anticipation of being the first through the door. If that makes me un-American…well, so be it.
I definitely want to do something special for the people I love and care about, but no matter the depth of my feeling for them, I’m not camping out anywhere. For anything. Period. That doesn’t make me callous or uncaring; it just means that I prefer to shop after sunrise- WELL after sunrise….
If you’re spending your Friday in the midst of the frenzy…well, you’re clearly a better and braver person than I am. I’ll spend my money, all right…but right now, I think I really just need more coffee.
