I have two "day after Thanksgivings" that are most memorable. The first was last year. The Disney store in my mall was giving out a special holiday mini bean bag plush that I just had to have. It was Pooh in a holiday sweater. They had only 100 so I knew I had to get up early to get one. I love Disney and hae collected over 300 Disney mini bean bags. Just about every character in every Disney family of characters. This has been over the past 6 years of collecting.
People are crazy over and can GET craxy ABOUT beanie babies. I decided to get to the mall at 4am. I figured I would be the first in line. I set my alarm clock for 3:30am. I showered before going to bed so i got up, got dressed, grabbed cofee, grabbed my portable stadium chair and off I went to the mall. When I got there, teh parking lot was FULL!!!!
I repeat..the parking was full at 4AM. I was shocked. Surely they would not be there for that beanie baby. If so, I had not change in hell of getting one! I parked, grabbed my chair and ran to the door. I saw a sea of people as I turned the first corner to the right. There is a Kaybee toy store in the mall and there were police doing crowd control there. There must have been 250 people waiting in line with corrals set up. I breathed a sigh of relief. Further down the mall on the left side was the disney store and there were 9 people in line ahead of me. I was number 10!
The people in line there had bought paper and pen and had given out their one numbers in the event other people tried to cut in line when the doors were open. The Disney store is not one of the mall anchor stores that open at 5 or 6 the day after Thanksgiving. It opened 1 hour earlier on that day..so it opened at 9 instead of 10. We had a very long wait!!! From 4am til 9am. I set up my chair and began to hurry up and wait. By 5am there were about 40 people in line for the Disney store and already there was trouble with people trying to cut in line. One person may be in line and then suddenly the 4 other people who were shopping would join then saying that the "one" was holding the place of 4. Luckily that was happening behind me.
Finally the lights of the Disney Store came on and we had about 1.2 hours more to wait until the doors opened. We could see the staff inside looking out to see how many of us were at the door. Finally they came out about 15 minutes before the stoer opened and gave out 100 numbers. All was good until 2 elderly women tried to get a number as I was about to receive mine. They just walked up and held out their hands for numbers.
I lit into them like white on rice! I got loud and you know how loud a sista can get. I told the Disney employee that those 2 heifers were not in line and were in fact cutting in line. They were not there at 4am like the rest of us and I told them they had better get their old, skinny white asses to the back of the line. Rather than rangle with me, they finally left. I had to loud them out until they were not in my line of vision. The nerve of them. Don't mess with a black woman who has been waiting in line since the wee hours of the morning for a beanie baby!
A few years ago, I decided to go to Walmart at 5am when it opened. I got there about 4:30 am and there was already a mob scene at the door. There was no line, no order...just utter chaos. I joined in that mob because I had to get in to get those items that were on sale. People in the front of the line began to bang on the doors at 4:45. Managers came to the front of store...did a lot of talking and then we saw keys coming. They opened 15 minutes early. I was in the middle of the pack. When those doors opened it was a stampede. I was running and pushing and so was eveyone else. It was either run or be trampled. I finally got in and them there was the mad scramble to get a buggy and run with that buggy to the toy aisle. What is that craziness all about. It takes you over on the day after Thanksgiving. Mild mannered shoppers are turned into crazy, fanatical, stampeding buggy wielding shoppers. I did that once at Walmart...got there at 5am. Never again. That was dangerous. A women in the front did fall just as she got in the store and luckily she got out of the way because no one stopped to help her. We all just kept running. People who worked there could not get to her until the stampeed at the front door was over and we had all begun to run down our perspective aisles in the stores. Crazy!
This year I do not have off so I will be at work . I did a lot of christmas shopping today. Walmart had a lot of things on sale now. In the toy section.
AND...I was able to get some things put on layway and I took others out at TJ MAxx and Marshalls. I am ready for Christmas. The day after thanksgiving is the start of Christmas for me.
SO>>>>how do you spend the day after Thanksgiving???