The virgin shopper

Black Friday. The biggest shopping day of the year. Crowds, pushing, shoving, yelling, fighting. Sound fun?? This was a new experience for me. I had never, ever attempted to shop on black friday. I usually liked to lay around, put up the tree and all the other decorations. This year, however, I decided to give this whole thing a whirl. My sisters LOVE doing this, so I thought I should give it a try... Anonymous Baby sister was getting a kick out of how shell shocked I looked. I have to say that I have never in my life seen anything THAT crazy in my life. There were people everywhere, lines everywhere, stuff everywhere. When they opened up the electronic stuff, people were screaming, and yelling like there was a bar fight. In the midst of all the yelling was a crying baby... some genius had brought their baby. That child will definately need counseling when they grow up. It was scarey. It was definately a fire hazzard... if there had been a reason to evacuate the building, we would have had a stampede, and lots and lots of dead people!

I think the thing that was the most disturbing was watching the way people were behaving. It seemed to bring out the worst in people. There was no Christmas spirit there-- just a bunch of people pushing and shoving to get the best deal. If I had to make a poster of materialism and consumerism... I would take a photo of Wal-Mart, at 5:00am, on black friday. Honestly, I didn't believe all the hype of how crazy it is; but believe you me, it is all that everyone says it is and more. I didn't enjoy the whole experience, it was quite disturbing. It was fun going to breakfast and just visiting. It was fun going to the mall, where there was hardly any people. I found Target to be kindof creepy too. I was looking for an X-box game that Thing2 wants for his birthday. They had none at Wal-mart (yes I did look), none at Kohls, so we tried Target. At first, there were none to be found. When I started complaining that I was never going to be able to find that game, this man came up and handed me one...he had 5 of the same game. Why? I don't know. Sortof creepy to me. Maybe greedy is the better word. We saw the same guy later, pushing a full to capacity shopping cart with multiples of everything in there. I just find that to be disgusting really. The whole experience upset me (sorry Anonymous baby sister).

Christmas to me is all about finding that perfect gift for the person that you are buying for. Taking your time, and really thinking about what it is that you are purchasing. Quality. Thoughtfulness. Love. I think there should be a measure of love in the gifts that you give.

I think that its great to be together. Go to breakfast... that was fun. I love being with my family. I will go again next year... maybe by then I will be more into it. Maybe I will have changed and be less discombobulated. My family, I am sure, hopes so!