COLUMN: Going through hell and back for a snow globe
The devil must have awaken with frostbite last Friday, because I’m pretty sure hell froze over.
No, it wasn’t because the Cleveland Browns won the Superbowl. It wasn’t because my parents bought me a car, either.
It was due to something so incredibly implausible that I’m sure it will take the devil the entire millennium to defrost the place. Don’t worry, I sent him a bag of that annoying rock salt to compensate for the trouble.
My wife made me go shopping at 3:30 a.m. on Black Friday – or as I like to call it, the day from hell. But let it be put on the record that I went completely against my will.
What, you don’t feel sorry for me? You should. Not only was I harshly awaken at an hour I’m sure even the devil himself doesn’t like, I was forced to go to the mall. I hate the mall. It’s a giant hangout for the upper class who have nothing better to do with their time and money. They’re tourist traps on steroids.
When I arrived in the mall parking lot with my father-in-law, I was shocked to see the sheer number of cars there. I thought I was there at 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon because the parking lot was so full. I checked my watch to make sure it really was that unsightly hour in the morning and that the sun just hadn’t been blocked out by some massive meteor explosion in Magna. Not that anyone would know or care.
We met up with my wife and mother-in-law at JCPenney. Now, of all the possible locations to go at 4 a.m., why JCPenney? Perhaps a nice shirt or new shoes or maybe some new bedding? Nope. It was all for a snow globe. I’m not even kidding.
My wife woke me up, made me stand in the cold and walk into the mall – which instantly induces a violent shopping twitch in me – all for a Mickey Mouse snow globe that stands about two inches high and barely has any fake snow inside. It’s not like she doesn’t have any of these either. She gets them every year and had to continue the tradition so she could have one that said 2007 on it.
I can handle that. It’s a weird tradition and she can do whatever she wants, but I had the hardest time understanding why I had to go. She explained it to me in much the same way a science professor calmly explains nuclear fusion theory, fully expecting you to understand it as easy as if he were teaching how to write your name. Needless to say, my head nearly exploded.
After a considerable amount of confusion, she finally made it clear I was getting a snow globe for her 26-year-old sister who lives in New York and has no access to a JCPenney, and if I didn’t get this snow globe it would cause a cosmic rift that would make the icecaps melt 20 years sooner than they were supposed to, thereby throwing off the balance of the planet and send the planet hurtling toward a superstar some 80,000 light years away, which would make Al Gore mad enough to produce another movie, which would destroy life as we know it. Whew. And all this time I thought a snow globe was just a Christmas decoration.
Anyway, I got the snow globe and I didn’t even have to stand in line for it. I walked right into the store and was handed a snow globe by an employee who had a smile pasted pasted on her smiling face. But behind the placebo smile I could see what she really thought, “Oh, how dare you come to this place this early in the morning, forcing me to wake up early and be nice to you? I had to down 12 Prozacs to even be tolerable this morning, and here you are excited about making me suffer. I’ll show you. Where’s your car?”
That was enough to make me leave, but not before my father-in-law and me snagged a few more snow globes. Our thinking was if we got enough this time, we wouldn’t have to be dragged out next year. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work though.
Since I was up anyway, I decided to drop by Best Buy and pick up a 100 pack of DVDs that were on sale for $6.99. Bad idea. By the time I arrived at Best Buy, the line was wrapped around the building. I stayed in the car and talked to my father-in-law until the store opened, and then we followed the line like a herd of sheep.
This experience was like something out of the “Twilight Zone” for me. There were police officers everywhere and all different types of people anxiously awaiting to enter the store to get the hot item of the year. Once I got inside, it was a madhouse. The place was jam-packed, and I had to muscle my way through to the back of the store to get to the DVDs. By the time I got there, all of them were gone. I wanted to punch someone but I couldn’t because there were too many people and if I tried, I would almost certainly have dislocated my shoulder on some lady’s oversized purse she was using as a Klingon bat’leth.
As we drove back home, I couldn’t help but notice how crowded the stores were everywhere. The traffic was awful, too. I couldn’t help but think how sad it was that people care this much about saving a few dollars that they’re willing to wake up before the zombies do, stand out in the bitter cold, fight hoards of people for a Tickle Me Elmo that can sumo wrestle with a child and then stand in line for two hours listening to mothers trying to console their screaming children. At first it disgusted me, but as I thought about it, it all made sense.
Women have replaced men as the hunters. No, it’s true. Sure, some men hunt, but they’re only a small breed of masculine patriots who are holding out in a world that is trying to make men more effeminate. Women have taken up the thrill of the hunt and call it shopping. Instead of a spear or gun, women are armed with a dangerous arsenal of credit cards, checkbooks and cold, hard cash. Black Friday is the female equivalent of the opening day of hunting season, complete with strange bright orange clothes and everything.
All I know is, women can have the thrill of the hunt, as long as I can go back to bed.
Seth Hawkins is a junior majoring in public relations. He is looking for a good lawyer to defend him in his upcoming case for breaking the man code by shopping on Black Friday. Comments and questions can be sent to him at seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu