Home School Curriculum Experts

I, for one, am glad that Black Friday is over. Not that I ever shop on Black Friday. Shopping is NOT my thing, even on a good day. But throw in getting up before I’ve gone to sleep good; pushing, screaming crowds; and lines circled around the store twice…I’m getting nightmares. Every year, though, I am guilted into considering hauling myself out on the day after a major holiday, with extended family still in town, and subjecting myself to the nightmare. I am tempted to do this because I, like most people, love a bargain. I like to feel that I have gotten the “best price all season”.
Once again this year, I started looking through the sale papers before my turkey digested. Would I find something so attractive, a price so alluring, that I would take the jump, make the dive into the cold waters of camping outside a Toys’R Us in the dark, freezing night? I decided to compromise. Most stores were offering online specials, even percent- off coupons if you made your purchases online. This, I figured, could be the best of both worlds (and I wasn’t even buying Hannah Montana merchandise.)
So, come midnight, I am sitting at my computer, fingers poised over the keyboard, credit card at the ready. When midnight strikes, I order fast and furiously, filling my shopping cart with more speed than I could ever have attained in a crowded store with sleep-deprived customers and staff. And then I come to checkout. The page locks up. OHHHH NOOOOO!!! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!!!!! I wait. I push the enter key 3,192 times. I wonder if I have just charged these things to my credit card that many times. I call customer service and get disconnected from hold four times. I go back and wait some more. Finally, I start over, now typing frantically, sure that my items will already be out of stock. Back to the ordering screen. IT LOCKS UP AGAIN!!! I hurry to log onto facebook, wondering if anyone else is having this problem. I chat with a couple of my friends, who are also frenetically switching from screen to screen., trying to find a site, any site, that will let them check out before it locks up. This gives me an idea, so I switch to another site, armed with another sale paper, and I encounter the same frustrating lock-up. One site had this cutesy message about the elves working to fix the problem…I was not in the mood for cutesy. I post a status about my angst, and one of my diehard friends who is camping out gets my message on her Blackberry and asks me what I am trying to get – she will try and get it in person. I could not reach her after this, however, and after two-and-a-half frustrating hours of lockups, I gave up and went to bed exhausted, turning down the request of another of my facebook friends to just “cowboy up” and meet her at the store at 4 a.m.
When I got up the next morning. I tried again. This time, the site is all up and smiley and friendly, until I get to the point where I click to order and it says “we’re sorry, that item is out of stock.” Everything. Everything. By this time it is me against that store. I put on my coat and head out the door, determined to look someone in the face. I get to the store and head to the back, where the items I want are located. I only have 30 minutes until the “early bird” shopping is over. The shelves are cleaned out. Oh, sure, there is the random microwave that is missing a handle, having fallen victim to an early morning tussle. But nothing…NOTHING…I want. I weave through a line of people, thinking to myself “Well, at least they opened a register in the back to take care of these shoppers back here.” Until I walked, and walked, and realized that “these shoppers back here” were at the back of a line that wound all the way around the store to the front. And this NINE HOURS after the store opened.
I did not have to think twice. I marched myself back up to the front, out to my car, and fought my way out of traffic to head home, having finally learned my lesson. “Peace On Earth” definitely does not start until after Black Friday.