A Black Friday To Remember

We're spending Thanksgiving in Phoenix this year, which meant yesterday eating my first Thanksgiving dinner outside. It also meant rifiling through the ads of the Thanksgiving editions of the Arizona papers for all of the Black Friday deals. To be truthful, I'd been looking forward to the ads all week. Several stores looked appealing initially, and I even figured I was willing to get up early and wait in lines for some of the extra special, extra limited, door buster deals.

As the day wore on, though, I felt less enthusiastic. Last year was really the first year I'd braved the early morning crowds hoping to get my hands on a few prized electronics at bargain prices. At that time I was up early to make my way to one store, Office Max, just after 6am, where I waited in line to get out for nearly an hour before giving up and leaving. I left out of frustration when the line was not moving and wrapped around the back of the store (and I was in the back). No deal seemed worth that kind of aggravation. When I then met Michelle and the rest of my family at Kohl's, my father was waiting in a line that wrapped around the store while my mother, siblings, and wife did the shopping in the meantime. It was sheer madness.

My memory of those events grew sharper as the sun faded last night, and I was not so anxious to be wait in those kinds of lines again. Still, Michelle and I decided to get up around 7am this morning and make our way to a few select stores and we had an absolutely delightful time. We took Jared with us and decided to make a morning of it. From Michaels to Staples to CompUSA to BestBuy to Mervyn's to Kmart to JB's (for Breakfast) to WalMart with Christmas Carols between stores. I don't think I've ever enjoyed shopping so much (though it probably helped that Michelle made clear she wasn't interested in shopping for clothes).

The key seemed to be letting the early morning maniacs have at the stores for a few hours before making our rounds. This meant giving up on most of the front page deals that get people into the stores, but there were enough enticements on the back pages of the ads to make us happy. There also weren't many lines (and short lines, after all, are a key to sanity and happiness).

I'm already looking forward to next year's. Perhaps then I'll have found the energy again to brave the early morning lines.