The Macho Man's Guide To Black Friday (Or, Goin' a TV Huntin')

My wife, daughter, and mother-in-law were all a buzz about shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. My nine year-old daughter was especially jazzed about getting up early to join the sea of salmon swimming up mall escalators. They had nothing in particular to shop for my wife just thought it was important to train my daughter in the fine art of being a good American woman and contributing to the capitalistic engine that makes America great.
Being somewhat of an endorphin junkie myself and wanting to contribute to the family’s desire to donate money to big box retailers I offered to participate in a manly way. Yes, I would go on a TV hunt much the way I would a deer hunt. My male friends wouldn’t mock me this way. It was a masculine foray to bring home the biiiig electronic score thrown over my shoulder.
In the part that is totally unmasculine my wife wrote down the model number we had agreed on as the best buy and then circled it on the newspaper insert. (Maybe I could treat the newspaper insert like a map, yeah, I could put a big buried treasure “X” on the TV and that would make it more piratey!) I gathered my layers of warm clothes, and kissed the lasses good night. I would sleep in my daughter’s bed so as not to wake them in the wee hours of the morning.
My wife and I agreed that getting to the store at 4 AM when they started handing out the claim tickets for the TV would be fine. I mean, really, who else was going to be waiting at a store at 4 AM? I decided to impress her and get there at 3:45 to be extra sure to capture the big one.
The alarm clock went off and I was pumped with adrenaline so I grabbed my hat, gloves, book, sales map, and folding chair and bounded silently out the door! I even bypassed the doughnut shop to assure I got my spot and my TV (of course the “Hot Now!” sign wasn’t on so it made it much easier to pass up).
I turned into the parking lot and much to my shock and awe were two to three hundred people in line already! They all seemed to be laughing, mocking, and pointing at me as I drove by in slow motion. “What I was I thinking?” they were laughing in their head. I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I was thinking that if I turn around right now I can be back in bed at 4:30 for a good three hours of stolen sleep!
For those of you interested in the deer hunt comparison I have never had two or three hundred hunters show up in a field. For safety’s sake if I did, I would still do the same thing. I would head back home for a nice toasty three hour nap. That many people competing for twelve TV’s or twelve deer cannot lead to anything good.
The rest of the day was spent in a manly way. My wife says I spoke with her as they were leaving on their little shopping expedition at 5:30 (I thought I just dreamt that!). I woke up at 7:30 to go play a couple hours of basketball with my nephew, some twenty years my younger. I then came home to work on the outdoor decorations which involved a lot of a macho’s guy favorite substance, (no, not beer) duct tape! Yes, I did go back out about 7:00 PM to look at TV’s with my wife. Yes, all the Early, or as I like to call them, Cuckoo Bird Specials were over but we could look in peace and calm. By looking at banks of sixteen TV’s at a time I felt like one of those cartoon aliens that have a line of sixteen eyes. I also don’t think I’ll be watching as many TV shows about tropical fish and incredible underwater TV footage as TV salespeople think. Nice pictures, but they seemed a little light on the plot.
Did I ever make the big score? You bet I did! The next morning my wife found a great TV for a great price! On line. In bed. Hmm, next time I’m thinking of deer huntin’ I’m getting’ my wife to Google “venison” first.