Black Friday

I experienced my first (and hopefully last) Black Friday last week.

I was shocked at the number of people driving around at 4am on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I also was shocked that I didn’t enter stores and find deals everywhere, waiting to be plucked up. The smart shoppers, I noticed too late, had done their research and brought with them lists of all the discounted things they wanted. Meanwhile, I wandered around in a sleep-deprived haze, my nearly-empty cart containing things that were useless and not even on sale, like two pairs of legwarmers and a backless, strapless bra (I kid you not), staring at everyone wheeling around their carts filled with Unbelievable Bargainz!!! It was too early in the morning for me to form any kind of last-minute plan and so I totally missed out, I’m sure, on some really spectacular deals.

Anyway, I wrote about the whole thing in this week’s Nashville Scene edition of Suburban Turmoil and I’ve reprinted the column here in its entirety for your reading pleasure!

Black Friday

While most of you were sleeping off a turkey overdose last Friday at four a.m., I was answering my front door.

“We’ve been driving around for an hour,” my father announced as he and my mom bustled inside.

“The clocks in our hotel room were wrong and we didn’t realize it until we’d left for your house,” my mom added. “So we went to a convenience store for coffee, but two men were having a fistfight inside. We decided to just skip it.”

“Good call,” I said. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” my mom said.

“Well then, let’s go.”

Across the state at that very moment, thousands of brave souls were heading out to their favorite shopping centers. It was Black Friday, a day when stores opened as early as midnight with incredible deals, a day I’d heard about but never had the slightest desire to experience for myself. This year, though, was different. My mom was in town.

My mother and shopping go together like hairspray and the Country Music Awards. While other kids grew up in daycare centers or playing in their backyards, my earliest memories took place in various ladies boutiques, as I amused myself in store windows and under dress racks while my mom shopped. With all that practice, I knew she was the perfect Black Friday sidekick.

I had no real plan of attack that morning, just a vague idea that Wal-Mart was the place to be. Inside, a good hundred people were lined up all the way to the back of the store, each with an empty shopping cart.

“What are y’all waiting for?” my mom asked one young woman.

“All their electronics specials start at five,” she replied. “So everyone’s standing in line to buy them before they run out.”

“Well, what exactly are you trying to get?” my mom wanted to know.

“I have no idea,” she said.

Okay, then. Not willing to stand in line for mystery electronics, Mom and I walked around aimlessly for a while. I remembered seeing a $15 coffeepot in Wal-Mart’s Thanksgiving newspaper insert, so I poked around until I found it. Meanwhile, the clock struck five and electronics began exchanging hands at the front of the store. As I paid for my coffeepot, shoppers headed for the exit tired but triumphant, their carts laden with televisions, computers, digital cameras and mp3 players. A scary amount of them looked like they’d have trouble buying themselves dinner at Applebees, let alone the 42-inch plasma monitors jutting from their shopping carts. I clutched my coffeepot to my chest, feeling lame. It was time to bust this joint in favor of Paradise.

“Let’s go to Target,” I said.

Once there, we stood in a line that stretched to the end of the building. When the doors opened at 6am, I let the hordes sweep me along to the electronics department, where I found The Goonies on DVD. “Only $3.48!” I crowed smugly, holding it aloft like a trophy while the shoppers around me shouted for various digital cameras at a woman behind the counter. Eventually, I found my mom, who was busy guarding a flat-screen TV/DVD player in her cart. “I got it!” she said exultantly. “ This is what everyone was going for, Lindsay! Only $199, when it’s regularly $330!” Of course, neither of us wanted it, but I could tell my mom was excited to have scored one of the last ones available. Eventually, we discarded it in Housewares in favor of a ten-dollar sewing machine. “I can’t believe it!” I said, placing it carefully in my cart. “I really need this sewing machine!”

“It won’t work,” my mom said dismissively. “It’s so cheap, it’s not going to work at all.”

“Yes it will,” I said, irritated. “If it didn’t work, they couldn’t sell it, Mom!”

“Well. If you want to spend your money on something like that…” Mom said, trailing off and ending with a pitying look that I knew all too well. Suddenly, I felt like I was 14 again. Geez, I hated it when she did that. But her attention had already wandered to the display beside the sewing machines. “Now this is something else altogether,” she said. “An electric dustbroom for ten dollars! I could use one of these!” She held it out appraisingly. “What do you think?”

“Well,” I sniffed derisively. “I mean, if you want to spend your money on… a piece of crap….” I said. She looked at me, momentarily surprised, and we both started laughing.

In the end, I bought several bags of junk, while my mom came home with… a headband. That’s right. Three hours of early bird shopping and all the Mall Queen had to show for it was a headband. But maybe that’s what makes her so good. She can see past the crowds and the discounts and realize that she doesn’t need any of it, not as much as she needs that Donna Karan pantsuit currently on sale at Neiman’s, anyway.

And damned if she wasn’t right on the money. My ten-dollar sewing machine? It doesn’t work at all.