The shot from the starter pistol still rings in the air

Back in 1989 I got a job at Target. I held that job for six and a half years and every one of those years I hated the holidays. My first Christmas there wasn’t so bad. I was a high school student working part time, doing high school things along with stalking the occasional male employee working in the electronics department. Nonetheless, I particularly found the holidays unbearable because there was no way I could ever get out of working on my birthday. There was a strict “no vacation” policy in effect between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the only way I ever managed to not have to work on my birthday was if my birthday actually fell on Thanksgiving day, which it did the first year I worked there and the last year I worked there.

Worse than having to work on my birthday was having to work Black Friday. The only way you could get out of working that day was if the priest performing your last rites called to tell your boss you had more pressing engagements and could he please find someone else to pass out the Power Rangers vouchers? I remember one year in particular when I was stationed just inside the doors with gift bags full of random samples and coupons that were supposed to go the first 200 or so customers that walked through the doors. All I remember of those first few minutes after the doors opened is hands. Lots of hands. Hands grabbing and hands taking. It was a scene not unlike the one in Jingle All the Way in which the toy store employee tries to hand out the balls for the Turbo Man raffle but the throng of customers gets so intense he just tosses the balls up in the air.

After experiences like the one above, I swore I’d never be one of those customers with her nose pressed up against the store front doors on a cold morning the day after Thanksgiving. For the most part I’ve kept my promise, but I have been insane enough to wake at ungodly hours and arrive just as a store was opening. That’s the Dutch part of me and she doesn’t need as much sleep.

This year I couldn’t do it though. I went to bed so completely exhausted Thursday night that I didn’t even want to consider waking before 8:00 am. However, I forgot to turn off the alarm to my radio, which wakes me every weekday at 6:15 and effectively woke everyone else in my house on a day none of us had to go anywhere. We brought Autumn into the room with us and attempted to get back to sleep, but putting a toddler in our bed is one way to guarantee we will get no more sleep. And yet we keep trying.

It took me until 10:00 or so to decide I actually did want to go shopping, but that was only because we were out of bread and toilet paper. I figured I could get what I needed at Meijer and see what was left from their early bird specials. I wasn’t expecting much because the die hard shoppers had already come and gone with their booty. As with anything, lowered expectations results in fewer disappointments and more surprises and I found myself pleasantly surprised to find some of the things I had hoped to pick up still in stock. Things like the super mega pack of Pampers for $10.99 (regularly $17.99). How diapers relate to the holiday gifts one normally finds at a Black Friday sale escapes me, but shit, I saved $14 on two packs of diapers and am not about to question their marketing decisions.

Normally I use the Black Friday insanity as an excuse to buy things I want for myself, but yesterday I showed a good amount of restraint and shopped for others. The only thing I bought that wasn’t a gift (aside from the diapers) was the movie Ratatouille. It was a toss up between that one, Shrek the Third and The Santa Clause 3. We watched part of it last night before Autumn went to bed and finished it up this morning after breakfast. It was enjoyable in that Disney Pixar-ish kind of way, and I was able to suspend my disbelief and not be grossed out by the thought of a rat creating meals in a Paris restaurant kitchen. At least I was until an entire colony of rats took over the kitchen to create a meal for a food critic. It’s one thing for little mice friends to gussy up a dress for a royal ball and another thing entirely to violate health codes for the sake of a gourmet meal. That was a little much for me.