Black Friday

I'm going to point out something that I think is pretty obvious.

If something has the adjective "black" attached to it, you should consider it an omen. That is to say, Black Friday madness is NOT worth the thirty dollars you save. You'll spend more in hand sanitizer alone, trying to recover from being bowled over by thousands of people who have slept on the sidewalk all night and spent zero seconds on personal hygiene before crowding you.

There is one exception to this rule. If you go to Tai Pan with your sisters and mom at 8 am Back Friday morning, you will have a fantastic time. I'm, like, ninety-nine percent sure of this. (Unless you don't like your mom and sisters. Then you should borrow mine for the outing and I'll offer a one hundred percent satisfaction guarantee.)

And I'll even go so far as to say that it's really just better to stay in all of Black Friday.

What can you do instead? One thousand things. Like, take a nap, make turkey soup, eat said soup, go for a walk, write a thank you card, paint your toe nails, watch a movie, or. . .organize your toy closet.

My children are innocent to the whole Black Friday event, but it still proved to be an ominous morning when, after feeding them a large, scrumptious breakfast, I announced that we were organizing the toy closet before we were playing. You say, "Black Friday"; I say, "Win My Sanity Back Friday".

To their credit, my children did not complain. To my credit, I did stop to feed them a light snack before moving on to organizing the entertainment hutch.

At about 2 pm, I ran out of Tupperware containers. I considered using Amazon Prime to get some to my house by Monday, but that was no good. Once I start a project, I don't stop until I'm finished. Otherwise, it never gets done.

So I took a deep breath and went to face the crowds.

Sure, I live in a small town, population 3228. But in the end, it's all about comparison, right?

I walked into Ace Hardware, selected my containers in about 15.6 seconds, and walked up to the cash register.

Normally, the cashier greets me with a smile, asks about my family, logs into my Ace Rewards account without asking for the number, tells me about their last dental visit to my doctor husband, and finishes my order (with an enormous helping of customer service) all in about two minutes.

There's never anyone in line. I never wait. Round trip, it takes six minutes.

But not on Black Friday.

On Black Friday, I was the third person in line, both registers were opened, and I had to wait eight minutes before my turn. By the time I got home, my children wondered what had taken me so long.

Serves me right for ignoring a perfectly obvious omen.