I woke my wife up at 3AM to the sounds of Reveille blaring from my iPhone. While she was not enthused with my choice of music, she was less enthused with waking up at 3AM. I told her the mission calls for it. While we haven’t been impacted significantly by the economic downturn, we have reduced our discretionary spending to make up for the rise in costs of gas and groceries. So, our mission was to do knock the holiday shopping out for as little as we could; and that meant getting up at 3AM to participate in the carnage that is “Black Friday.”
We were able to get most of what we were looking for. One item we wanted to purchase at Walmart, was the Leapster. This is for my three year old, we were standing next to the roughly 4X4X4 foot box at 4AM. The sale did not start until 5AM. So for an hour, I listened to Metallica and the like, building up the rage. At 5 AM, when the Walmart employee opened the box, what I experienced was as violent as a mosh pit. There was a surge from the front trying to get through the front line; only to have about 30 or so of the Leapsters. Under this massive box, they had 4 display cases of Leapsters. Looking at the size of the shipping box, we were expecting at least twice that. I thought I wasn’t able to get one as I was in the second row. Luckily, one of the ladies in the front row, grabbed two and since I had been standing there for that long. She offered me one. Now I’ll have an excited three year old.
We still have a little shopping to do, but we are mostly complete. And we were able to do it without going heavily into debt.