Black Friday...We (Sort Of...) Did Not Participate

 The two pictures on this post were not taken today. They were taken before this week, before Black Friday. I know the whole world's change in the past couple of years, but I've to to say, I miss shopping on Black Friday.

You know what I mean. There was once a time when all stores closed on Thanksgiving and then beginning around midnight for some, 4am for others, the stores would open their doors and the hoards would charge in, back when you'd pull up in the middle of the night and there'd already be lines of people freezing their keisters off all hoping to score on the big-ticket items...TVs, and electronic items mostly.

We didn't go hog wild, as others did. We usually just went to Target...it was the closest big store to us. We'd spend a few hours and see what we could find. I remember getting a 10x Pixel Kodak digital camera for one-hundred dollars. That was a steal back then. I also remember looking at the line of shoppers waiting to check out, the line going back into the kids shoes section. So with a couple of shopping carts and us wanting to be home before noon, we casually asked the worker stationed at the jewelry counter if she could check out our stuff. There was no line and she said, "Yes." We saved several hours that blessed Black Friday.

We only went Black Friday shopping a few times. Then, came the internet and online shopping and the way we did Black Friday shopping changed. You didn't have to freeze or get up in the middle of the night--a few well-timed clicks and that prized item discounted 15 to 30% could be yours.

That's when I think stores began staying open on Thanksgiving so there was no need to camp out or do the things that we used to do. I sort of miss those days, even though they were crazy and un-Christian, and people actually died trying to get whatever it was they thought was more important than human life.

We had to run an errand today. On the way home we stopped by the Main Street Mercantile to pick up some things, and there just happened to be a Black Friday sale going on. We went in and bought some Christmas gifts. There was no long lines, no fights in the aisles, no waking up at 2am or standing outside in the cold, but it was still fun.