My First and Perhaps Last Black Friday

I woke up with a startle on Friday morning at 3:30am. My sister had the unpleasant duty to wake me up and, without my hearing aids in, I almost smacked her not knowing who the hell was trying to get me up at this ungodly hour. Then I realize that I chose this. So we hopped in the car and were on our way with hot coffee in our hands and anxious anticipation in our minds. How many people would be there? Would the rain drive them away? Would the deals really be worth it? Could we possibly get hurt by a stampede? While the parking lot of Kohl's and Target didn't seem to be overly crowded, we quickly saw the lines out the door waiting for the grand opening and our jaws dropped. People were lined up around the building and then some! Some people put real clothes on, some stayed in their pajamas, some appeared to have not slept all night, others looked fresh as a daisy. And then there was "that guy". He was over 6'5" and I guess when the tag says one size fits all, they didn't exclude that the Snuggie he was wearing would be the perfect fit. Now, he didn't wear it as seen on tv, he wore it more like a cape a la The Lord Of The Rings. We are rookies, but we knew to stay away from Snuggie-man. The doors opened to Kohls and we made our way inside. We didn't know what we wanted, but we just knew we wanted it to be cheap. Turns out they did have some great deals but I'm not so sure the stuff I got would not have been available all day and at a time ending in "pm". But I digress. So, with parcels in hand we stood in the longest line I've ever been in. We met some interesting folks and I did some "man on the street" style interviews of them to get the best tricks of the trade. One woman had been doing this for 7 years and when she finished telling us all about how to do it right, she remembered something else she wanted and so she dumped all her stuff on her 90 year old grandmother also in line and sprinted off. She was back in a flash and Nanna didn't seem to mind, but we were worried about her for a minute. So, my grand total at Kohl's? $40. But I did save $40 on the stuff I bought so I figured I was a winner. Then we went off to Target which seemed promising given the seemingly hundreds of available cashiers. However, once we perused the store and picked up our goodies, that line was worst than them all and moved painfully slow. Now, Target is where people were getting nasty. Having a cart was ideal for waiting in line, but not so good in navigating the electronics section which was where the magic was happening. People were lined up for the 5 available alarm clocks at rock bottom prices and if you stepped in the wrong spot and assumed you had the rights to one of them, they were gonna kick your ass to Tallahassee. So, what did I get at Target? Well, quite a few things actually but none of them were on sale and none of them would be unavailable on a different day and different time. So now it was 6:30am and we couldn't take anymore. We refueled and headed home. Then we decided that since BJs was open at 7am, let's head over there. Okay, so here I did find some bargains (but again not doorbusters just general bargains going on all weekend) I spent more money here than anywhere (Kristin and Helen can stop nodding their heads in disapproval now) but I loved what I got! We were out of there and in the car again and I turned to my sister and said, okay, what shall we have for lunch? She kindly informed me that it was a bit early for lunch and as I looked at the clock I realized that while I had been up and shopping for the past 6 hours, it was only 9:30am and the next thing on my shopping list was a nice long nap!