The Island of Humanity

The commercialism of “Black Friday” alone is enough to make me want to avoid it, but with modern online shopping it’s difficult to understand why anyone bothers.  I guess the special “in store only” discounts draw people in, but I have a small family of thrifty people, so lining up outside of a Wal-Mart doesn’t interest me much.  However, Half-Price Books (HPB) had a black Friday special that did interest me.  HPB’s deal was that the first 100 people in line at any location got a free reusable shopping bag with a $5 gift card inside except for one “lucky” bag that had a $100 gift card, you got a coupon good on black Friday only, and a free calendar with any purchase.  Also, the stores opened at 7:00am, rather than some insane 4:00am opening, so arriving at HPB this morning was similar to getting to work early.  I arrived at Richardson’s small HPB at 6:40 (rather than the giant ware-house sized Dallas location that I was sure would have 300+ people lined up outside) and got at the back of a long line.  Once we got inside the store, 4 people who had been in line after me received free shopping bags: I was the 96th person in line!

During the 20 minutes I waited, I chatted with some of the other people in line.  There was a mother who’s teenage son had taken a seasonal job at the mall and had to get to arrive at work at 3:00am that morning to get ready for the rush at his store  We talked about the sort of jobs we had had as teenagers, how spending money took on a whole new meaning when you could price something in terms of the number of hours you had to work at a crappy job.  I mentioned that I had grown-up in Illinois and had detasseled and pollenated corn for a seed company one summer.  A grandfather in line with his grandson mentioned that he too was from Illinois (the Chicago suburbs) and had cousins from Iowa who had done the same sort of work as teenagers.  I unzipped my jacket to show my Chicago Bears sweatshirt “Bear Down!” I said.  The grandfather lived in western Texas now but he was in Dallas because wife had had surgery earlier in the week.  I wished his wife well and said I hoped the surgery outcome was positive.  He said it was.  His grandson looked to be of middle school age, but was still friendly and talkative, rather than grumpy and sullen as many kids in that age group can be.  An African-American father and son were in line and talking with the mother I had talked to earlier.  The father looked well built and strong and was wearing a jacket with the name of a Judo club on the back.  His son had on a letterman style jacket with the USA and Japanese national flags on the back.  I wondered if they practiced judo together and if the father was an instructor, but the line started to move forward and I never got a chance to ask.

I was almost sad to go into the store...it was fun chatting with people in line.  In 20 minutes I had found and island of humanity in the sea of black Friday commercialism.  I’m glad I went out this morning!