I was here, in the glamorous united states since I was 22. That is for eight years for people who don't know how old I am now (LOL) and I've never been out shopping on a black Friday. One of my dear friends who wanted to go shop with me ditched me for a skiing trip to a nearby tourist spot. Determined to find out what the hype is about, I planned a trip with Appu, my childhood friend turned husband's colleague's wife. The colleague also happens to be a childhood friend of mine. Anyway, Appu and I spent the whole night in a typical "preteen sleepover" kind of a way in anticipation of black Friday by straightening our hair with a new styling iron I'd purchased. We were all set to hit the roads at 5 am. My agenda was to go to Toysrus and pick up some little princess dolls for Aarti and get a price adjust on a pair of Dale tiffany lamps I'd purchased a couple of days ago. I planned to buy Cinderella, Belle and Ariel the mermaid. The savings I was looking at were $24. i was hoping for a $30 refund on my tiffany inspired lighting.
So here's how it went. My car was parked in the ruthless cold of Best buy parking lot since 8 pm of the previous night. Santu was the 100th person in line to get some gadgets. I was not used to take out Sarat's car (who promised to take care of Aarti whole I shop for the cheapest deals known to humankind!) and so Appu and I got into Sarat's car, drove to wal mart where Kittu (Appu's husband) scored a slow cooker that they might never use for $5 and an Elmo toy that he decided to return the next day for $10 after staying out of home like Santu since 8 pm the previous night. My hands were almost twisting in that cold and my spine could feel the heat of the cold through four layers of clothing. We swapped Sarat's Infinity with Kittu's Camry. Thus Appu and I headed to Toysrus around 5 40 am and the door was literally busting with the rest of the world that had set out to find the cheapest deals known to human kind except that most of them didn't find what they wanted just 30 minutes after the doors opened and there was a line to the cash register that would put a Freebie line to shame. All I got was an Ariel little princess toy and Appu picked up a fisher price lap top at a savings of $15. fast forward to 7 30 am and both of us were out of the stores with a combined savings of $23. That $23 costed us a good night's sleep, almost two hours in a bee line to that god forsaken cash register, a head ache, a day out of our thanksgiving weekend and an upset stomach for me.
Now, please don't get me started on that $30 I was counting as a refund for my Dale Tiffany lamps. I could have paid $100 more for both the lamps if I'd waited for black Friday. So, if I saw the glass as half full, I actually learnt that I saved $100 by not shopping on black Friday.
Since I was out in the mall anyway, I roamed around for a couple of hours and probably burned some calories at the cost of a toddler crying for mom at home and a husband clueless about what is happening. Santu, in spite of being out since 8 pm didn't do as well as he thought he would. So girls who played dress-up should probably not complain.
Black Friday is a scam. A trap to lure innocent buyers. An utter waste of time and money. These are the words of wisdom that ring in my mind as I am typing this blog which adds one more thing to the things that have costed me on that fateful Friday morning - sanity and emotions.
