Let the madness begin

Resslin' Around by Casey Ressler

You people are nuts," I thought to myself on Friday morning.

It was 6:15 a.m., and I needed to be at work early. I thought I'd quickly drop in to the Big Box Store I love to hate, because of the early-bird sales. I needed just a couple of things, and who in their right mind goes shopping at 6 a.m.? By that time on Friday, my tryptophan hangover had not even subsided yet -- there was still some considerable sleepy dirt in my eyes, and I could still taste those Thanksgiving Bloody Marys that seemed like a good idea on Thursday, but had stuck with me enough to make Friday morning borderline miserable.

Evidently everybody in the Valley goes shopping the day after Thanksgiving. It turned out to be the craziest thing I've seen in a long time, as televisions, DVD players and Playstation2 machines were literally falling off the shelves and into the carts of crazed shoppers, many of whom left their manners at home in the refrigerator with the really dry turkey and soggy leftover stuffing.

My initiation into the madness was quite cold. That's because there were no parking spots left in the entire freakin' parking lot, which is bigger than some Major League Baseball stadiums. I ended parking in the strip mall next to Big Box Store, and the walk was invigorating. At one point, with the snow and rain mix falling, I thought about trying to hitchhike from my parking spot to the store's entrance.

Upon getting there, I found out there were no carts left at Big Box Store, because the thousand or so other crazy people who had their alarm clocks set earlier than I do at the peak of the salmon run had gobbled them up well before 6:15 a.m. One lady had three of them, filled to capacity with toys and televisions, blocking up three aisles of traffic trying to get that one last Dora the Explorer wedged into the cart. I think she ripped the heads off two Care Bears to make room in the cart -- but you can always sew those back together later.

I eyed my item I needed across the way -- there was a huge stack of them (I can't say what it was, because my wife occasionally humors me and reads my column). Then one dude put one in his cart, before I could wade through the hundred or so people fighting over an armoire at the packed intersection of Lunatic and Crazed aisles. Then one lady grabbed two of them before I had taken another step.

I started acting like an NFL running back trying to get through the pile and into the endzone. I darted around two men with a spectacular spin move, stiff-armed an old lady to the floor (save your letters -- I'm just kidding!) and hurdled two young children crying because they wanted SpongeBob Squarepants underwear but their mom said no, that Santa Claus may be getting the underwear, but not if the kids continued to cry.

Finally, I got to the stack, which had diminished considerably in the two minutes it took me to get there, and grabbed the item.

All that was left was a dash to the checkout, which turned out to be a marathon instead of a sprint.

In all, I bought my one item, and it only took 50 minutes to do it. I thought about hailing a taxi to return me to my truck parked two zip codes away, but thought better about it. On the long walk back to the truck, I vowed to do my Christmas shopping early, and to pay full price to avoid the madness.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He enjoys shopping as much as he does root canals.