Unlikely Black Friday Shopping Trip

So last night, Thanksgiving evening, after my last guests, my friend Kristin and her daughter & my brother and sister-in-law had left, I sat down on the couch in front of the fire. Everyone else was asleep. I looked at the clock and yawned. My head hurt a little. 11:15 p.m. "I really should go to bed" I thought.

5 minutes later I got a text message "We are outside your house, come shoppping with us."

What? Really? No, I'm so not a Thanksgiving-night-Walmart-Shopper kind of gal.

So I opened the front door and there were 2 (one was already in bed) of my 3 SGS girls, blaring Beyonce, "Girls Who Rule The World" What woman could refuse that? Besides, I though, I really need some advil....

So off to my first (and maybe last) experience with Black Friday Shopping. It was a thinly controlled chaos when we got there. Andrea told us point blank NOT to get a cart, it would slow us down too much. Turns out she was right. She instructed us to get a map. We obeyed.  The item Cristina came for was gone already.  We all wanted one of the $40 wireless printers. Andrea staked out the spot, Cristina got the cart.

I had been looking into a laptop and they had one that was a really good price starting at midnight. I walked over to where they were and inquired what the procedure was. Apparently there are numbers that you get. They gave them all out at 10pm. They were gone.

Then next to me was an older man who said something like "hey come with me.." and I did. (Just over to the next aisle mind you...) he said. " We have an extra ticket and we've been waiting to give it to someone nice." Score! Cheap laptop back on!!

So I stood with the other people who were bitching and complaining about people cutting and about not getting in front of them. And telling other people THEY were rude... The man with the laptops kept telling everyone that if you had a ticket, that you WOULD get a computer. They apparently did not believe him because the bitching continued. 

At 12:05 a.m. I got the laptop and made my way to my friends who had fled the scene of people SWARMING the wireless printers.... (While nabbing 3 in the process.)

We moseyed through the crowd of people who didn't look to me like they had any business spending the amount of money that their carts represented. I tried not to think that. We chatted and shopped.

We waited in line forever. I was fading fast. I bought my advil. We pooled our cash for waters. We hurried through the scary parking lot.

I had such fun with those women last night. I crawled into bed at 2am. I was tired today and still had a headache. I remedied it with a walk in the woods with my husband.

But tonight all I can think of is what a special thing it is,  to have someone who likes you enough to remember to swing by your house to get you to go on a midnight shopping expedition. That's something awesome.