Black Friday

Next week is the best holiday of the year. No gift pressure, no hype, no songs that grate on your nerves, just family and food and football. The next day is the worst holiday of the year: Black Friday. We all know how I feel about shopping, but once upon a time, I was not this way. Once upon a time, I didn't mind crowds and driving around for a place to park.

So on Thanksgiving night, 2007, my hometown friends Annie, Lauren, Melissa and I thought it would be a great idea to take a little ride to the outlets a couple towns over from ours. The stores opened for special Black Friday sales at midnight, and we weren't 21 yet and we were home for break. We piled into my mother's Trail Blazer and pumped some tunes and joked and laughed and were going to have the best time!

But best time, we did not. We opted not to take the highway to avoid traffic. We were locals. We knew the back roads. Unfortunately, everyone else headed to Wrentham that night was also a local. Because that was the point. We rounded a corner on route 140 (a residential street) and we hit a SOLID wall of traffic. No big. It'll take a little while...all part of the adventure, right? We amused ourselves by taking pictures.

  Anyway, it took us 2 hours to finally get to the outlets. It was TORTURE. We were exhausted by the time we got there, but come HELL OR HIGH WATER, we were shopping. The crowds were nothing short of insanity. I'm talking lines out the door insanity. You would have thought they were giving stuff away. Finally, we threw in the towel and walked back to the car. I could almost feel my warm bed, the sheets tucked up around my chin, the pillow cradling my aching head.

But no. The traffic going out was worse than the traffic going in. I'm talking get-out-of-New Orleans-Katrina-is-coming traffic. Everyone's-leaving-New York-because-of-an-asteroid traffic. Epic, epic traffic.

There were cars trying to drive over other cars and over the grass and through the woods to get to the highway. Never have I ever wanted to see open road more than I did during those few hours. I was like GET ME SOME FOOD WE'RE GOING TO STARVE AND DIE IN THIS PARKING LOT. I was like I'M STARTING TO PANIC WE'RE NEVER GETTING OUT OF HERE!!! I was like CAN'T YOU PEOPLE START MOVING?? KATRINA AND THE ASTEROID ARE GOING TO KILL US ALL DON'T YOU SEE??????

We tried to keep our spirits up. Lauren, Annie and I kept playing the "Dear AIM" game, which makes fun of Melissa's instant messenger away messages that liked to voice her every complaint, but she was having none of that. And when Missa ain't happy, nobody ain't happy. But then again, if I were her, I would have punched us in the face.

dear AIM, today i got stuck in the WORST traffic jam. wrentham sucks. and then my car started acting funny. what a TERRIBLE DAY. UGH.

I got home at 5 AM.