Black Friday
Thanksgiving day, as I was eating my turkey, my friend asked me if I wanted to join her in some early morning shopping. There she was, surrounded by catalogs and newspaper advertisements from every big box I had ever heard of. “Old Navy opens at 5:00,” she said.
I thought about it. I thought about my chronic insomnia and how I rarely sleep past 5:00 A.M. these days. “I could be persuaded to go to Old Navy at 5:00,” I declared.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
“We could go to Old Navy and then Office Depot. They’re right next to each other.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “I need something from Office Depot.”
The next morning, I bounded out of bed at 4:30, full of the energy of insomnia and the anticipation of a good sale. We got to Old Navy and eventually found a parking place. I looked, slack-jawed, at all the cars in the parking lot. “Wow,” I said. “This is serious.” We went into Old Navy and I started collecting items in my arms. I was grateful when an employee handed me a gigantic bag to put clothes in as I shopped. I found lots of great things and stuffed the bag full. I was trying on about the twelfth item, when my friend came into the fitting room area and called my name with a slightly questioning tone.
“Are you waiting for me? I’ll be done in just a sec,” I shouted to her. I rushed to try on the last few items, not wanting to keep her waiting. When I came out, she headed quickly for the check out and exit. She had, apparently, already purchased her items, as evidenced by the large, Christmas-decorated Old Navy shopping bag she was clutching.
I quickly paid for a number of things I had found at very good prices. We got in the car and drove the quarter mile to Office Depot. My friend was my guide. I had gone into this blind. It took me a while to understand the meaning of the incredibly long line of dark figures that ran along the entire front side of Office Depot in the early morning light. Insomnia can do strange things to one’s ability to comprehend reality. “Are they only letting in a few people at a time?” I wondered. “Are there that many people already in the store?” My friend noticed my quizzical expression and explained to me that at a little before 6:00, this store was not yet open.
“Oh my God,” I said.
I trudged across the parking lot off her right shoulder, following slightly behind. We got into the back of the line in front of the adjacent big box. I wondered if anyone else would get in line behind us before the store opened. I looked around and saw about four or five people trickling towards us. My friend and I looked at each other. She was in good humor but bit her bottom lip ever so slightly as she held her ad for the Acer pink netbook she had been talking about on Facebook for the last three days and during dinner the night before. Her husband told her that if she came home with a pink netbook, he would get out the “rattle can” and spray paint it olive green. But she wanted it badly, and there we were at the end of the line at just before 6:00 A.M. She clutched her Office Depot newspaper advertisement with $199.00 marked in big, red numbers next to the pink netbook.
The woman next to us asked her what she had come to buy. My friend showed her. My friend asked her what she had come for.
“A router,” she said.
“A what?” I asked. It began to occur to me that everyone in line had come for a specific object.
Just then a helicopter flew over our heads and hovered above us. “They’re filming us,” my friend said.
“Oh my God,” I said staring up at the underbelly of the helicopter.
The woman asked me what I had come for.
“File folders,” I replied.
An Office Depot employee worked his way down the line asking each person what his or her early morning objective was. When he got to me he said, “What are you intending to buy this morning?”
“I need some file folders,” I said.
At last, they let us into the store. My friend vanished instantly. I moseyed past some interesting items and then decided to look for file folders. While I was still trying to locate them, I looked up and there was my friend. “They’re out of them,” she said.
“What??” I exclaimed, unbelieving.
“They just sold out of them.”
“Oh, no!” I said.
“That’s okay,” she replied. “I know exactly how much it is on Amazon. It’s my backup.”
I had trouble deciding which pack of file folders to buy, but I sensed the motionless presence of my friend near me and looked up to see her hand gripped tightly around her purse handle. “I don’t really want the ones that bulge too much. They take up too much room,” I said quietly. I debated under the pressure and then found just the right ones: they didn’t bulge at all and there was only about twelve of them in the package. “Here we go,” I said. “These are exactly the ones I want.” Satisfied, I headed off in the direction of the check out line. I stopped abruptly when I saw a line of people that wound around and around and around at right angles like the pattern of a Greek rug. The line didn’t appear to be moving at all. Aghast, I turned and faced my friend. She was looking at me solemnly. “Ahhhh, forget it,” I said and slapped the file folders down on a nearby display rack. I saw her shoulders give a little, and with an expression of relief, she followed me out of the store.
Lucy Whitmarsh is a Boynton Beach resident. She wrote this essay for The Coastal Star.
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