Black Friday Rule

In the 1993 film Alive, a rugby team is trapped in a frozen wasteland. With little hope for survival, the team eventually becomes so desperate that they have to eat their deceased teammates. With the exception of the rugby and cannibalism, that basically describes my Black Friday.

I know what you're thinking, "Only materialistic idiots go out on Black Friday." And while that may be true in most cases, this time it was just a bunch of guys looking for a good time. Ya see, me and my three best buddies from high school have been going out on the day after Thanksgiving for years now. This time around, we were even joined by a fourth buddy, who just happened to call at the right time and decided to join us. By far, out of all the years I've gone, this was the worst in terms of weather.

The new trend seems to be for stores to open earlier and earlier each year. The majority of stores started their sales at 5AM, a whole hour earlier than last year. Naturally, in order to keep the ratios the same, you have to show up earlier to compensate. And so, we got to Best Buy at around 2:45 instead of 3:45am. This was a big mistake. It was a brisk 11 degrees outside Friday morning, and the wind was doing everything it could to make me feel violated. By 4:30, I was pretty sure I had lost my mind.

In years past, there were fights and arguments and all sorts of entertaining things when the doors finally opened. But since then, Best Buy has really begun to take care of things. They are quite strict in letting those actually in line in the store first, and they only allow 300 people at a time. That seems like a lot, but when the doors opened there had to be around 500 actually in line. So the "entertainment" factor of Black Friday has been greatly reduced. And with the harsh weather conditions, and the lack of sleep... I was beginning to wonder why I still did this. Of course, the only reason for me to do is to see my friends, who I see less and less of as we progress through college. And then of course, there was purchasing In the Line of Fire on DVD for $4.99... it doesn't get much better than that.

The rest of my Friday was seriously nonexistent. I got home around 9am, took the hottest shower I think I've ever taken, and then slept until 4 in the afternoon. I almost completely missed the sun! And I still haven't completely recovered from the wonky sleep schedule I was forced to take on during all of this. It would be much better if stores would just open up at midnight on Thanksgiving... just get the damned sale over with so I can get my normal amount of sleep and stay warm. Maybe that's too much to ask for.