Forgot to post this when it ran on Friday. This is one of those examples of a topic that should have made a good column, should have been hilarious, but for a number of reasons (including things I had to leave out of it) it ended up being just all right. Strangely, I had a number of calls from people telling me how much they liked it.
Go figure.
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Mobs, Miracle on my first Black Friday
Joe Killian
News & Record
12/8/06
This year my family decided to split up for Thanksgiving, each of us going to visit far-flung relatives. I had to work, so I decided for the first time ever to take part in a different sort of holiday tradition: Black Friday.
For the uninitiated, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving — when stores all over the country deep-discount big-ticket items and break out the “buy one, get one free” stickers. It’s so named because it could, all by itself, bring a business from the red to the black. As mania set in and people began shoving and swinging in long lines at department stores, the day became just as synonymous with black eyes.
As much as I love gifts and gadgets, I’ve never been the type to get up at 4 a.m. and stand in line for hours to get my hands on them. This would be an excellent reason to give it a try — participating in the madness with the cool detachment of a journalist so that I could later mock the very people with whom I’d stood in line. I wouldn’t be like them. I would be… experimenting.
Full column here.
1 Comment
November 29, 2008 at 4:18 am
Black Friday should be banned.
http://nbainsidestuff.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/black-friday-should-be-banned/