Ginger's Black Friday Diary

This Thanksgiving was... different, to say the least. Not only did I not go home, but I didn't eat a Thanksgiving dinner, I didn't watch the Packers game, and I didn't spend the next day and a half in a food-induced coma. Instead, I ate a sandwich, listened to Bears fans complain about Cutler's thumb, and spent the next day and a half expanding the holes in the bottom of my Converse.

I also did Black Friday with a friend, and it was simultaneously awful and wonderful. Here is my story.

THURSDAY

3:00 p.m. Arrive at Best Buy to discover that my friend's mom has been there since Wednesday afternoon.

3:02 p.m. Ponder the consequences of this a moment while we settle into the tent (the second one in line, no less), a truly spectacular contraption featuring a porch, space heater, and ridiculous number of blankets.

3:35 p.m. Best Buy opens at midnight. Slowly come to terms with the 8.4166 hours that lie before me.

4:06 p.m. Time for Thanksgiving dinner! Wild Cherry Pepsi, ham and cheese sandwich, and Oreos. Somehow, food tastes better when eaten in dire circumstances (like when I'm slowly starting to lose feeling in my extremities).

4:47 p.m. Spill my Pepsi. Spend the next few minutes wondering why I'm using perfectly good paper towels to clean Pepsi off concrete.

5:21 p.m. Nap time! For little other reason than that I'm bored, I'll probably need the extra sleep later, and hypothermia is starting to set in. (Note: it's actually about 40 degrees, so contracting hypothermia is unlikely.)

6:02 p.m. Napping is difficult on concrete. Consider doing the extra-credit physics work I probably should do. For approximately half a second. (There's NO WAY I'm proving the formula for the elliptical motion of planets.)

8:48 p.m. Waiting in line for Black Friday does something weird to you. Time blends together. The 10 seconds when a man dubbed Creepy Guy poked his head into the tent and made far too much eye contact could just have easily been 10 minutes. Or an hour. NOBODY KNOWS.

9:24 p.m. For the third time, a red marker has been lost. The significance of the marker, nobody knows. The tent is more or less emptied as we hunt for it. Again.

10:02 p.m. The wind flips the tent up, and, for whatever reason, cursing at the wind suddenly seems appropriate.

10:45 p.m. They're handing out tickets for big-list items, so people don't kill each other. Oddly enough, I'm grateful for this.

11:05 p.m. Time to pack up the wonderful, wonderful tent and space heater, and wallow in self-loathing in the cold. No big.

11:45 p.m. Everyone starts to inch towards the door, and it makes me nervous.

12:01 a.m. Best Buy is open. News cameras and chaos are everywhere.

12:08 a.m. No luck with the headphones I wanted, but I did manage to snag Deathly Hallows pt. 2 for $7, and Inglorious Basterds for $4, so I'm not too disappointed. Powerwalk to the checkout.

1:02 a.m. Out of the checkout line, and onward to Target.

1:40 a.m. Hurry up.

2:14 a.m. Wait.

2:55 a.m. Hurry up.

3:22 a.m. I guess we're in Claire's now. As my friend said, “This is a scary store.”

3:27 a.m. Wait.

4:01 a.m. Hurry up

4:20 a.m. Fantasize about the tiny canoe I'll build with the tiny lipgloss palette knives that look like paddles. Wait. How did I get to Bed, Bath, and Beyond? And why?

4:57 a.m. Discover that Staples doesn't open till 6—not 5, as we thought. Absolutely not. Time to go to bed.

Ginger's Song of the Week: How do you feel about Dutch-Belgian jazz/blues duos? Well, they're actually pretty awesome.

Did you skip Thanksgiving to shop?

Related post: Coping Mechanisms for Black Friday