Hello everyone, We're back again by some miracle ... who knows why. But ... we're here. For our readers in the US, we hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving. For everyone else, happy Friday. Here in the United States, a huge thing is Black Friday. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. According to the research I just did, most countries celebrate it in some capacity. We've never liked Black Friday, not because we're super capitalist and against sales. But because we're disgusted with just how ... frenzied ... people get in order to get their Black Friday deals. To illustrate that point, it's story time.

Story Time, Black Friday Edition

I was 5 years old, and by this point in life knew that every Thanksgiving we would go to Illinois to celebrate with Mother's family. That's tradition, therefore that's what happened. Thanksgiving day was never our favorite because they'd crowd 45 people into a space the size of maybe a standard living room with an attached kitchen. While crowded into this space, they would proceed to do things like scream loudly for no given reason, have food fights, yell at football, loudly, argue dramatically with each other about the best way to cook a turkey, and in general have precisely zero celebration of what school taught me Thanksgiving was supposed to be. But I could get away from that madness. They had a basement. A cold, quiet, big basement with a bed and pillows. I could get away from them ... Black Friday was a different story. For obvious reasons, us kids couldn't stay home alone at 5 years old ... that is some form of illegal in a lot of states I believe. But that didn't stop my family. Mother, Margy, and Leah along with their very loud pack of screaming lunatics would leave at 4 in the morning, leaving us kids in the care of the men. That wouldn't last long. One year there were no men present: they all had to work. So all of us got bundled into the car, a suburban, and taken out to town. There, we'd be dragged through store after store. Often used as placeholders in the lines while the rest of the adults continued to shop. Oh, you're hungry? We're shopping right now. We haven't eaten in 12 hours? Oh that's fine, it's shopping time. We were treated like dolls. Try this clothing on. Play with this toy and see if it works. Oh you're having fun? Stop playing now and give that here so I can buy it. The other kids grew to love it. They found it great fun to try on endless clothing and run about to endless stores. But even back then I couldn't stand for long periods of time. I remember distinctly feeling tired, bone tired, more tired than I'd ever felt in my life ... and knowing it wasn't normal. Knowing that it's not normal to need 3 days to recover from walking across a town... But Mother was determined. And the more I struggled, the worse her mood got. One time I fell down. I'd gotten mashed into by a frenzied shopper heading for a display of toys and trying to get there before Margy. I wasn't doing well, so it didn't take much to push me over. My mother didn't react well. I was accused of making a scene. I was taken home and told, “Since you don't want to behave for shopping time, you get no food and no Christmas presents.” Exact. words. verbatim. I got no dinner that day. She wasn't allowed to follow through with the no presents comment, I assume Dad told her no, that's not a thing you get to do. I got books and clothes that year.

Why in the world did we just tell you all that?

As we were typing, we were wondering the same thing. But I've come to a conclusion now. I told this story because I don't want the same thing to happen to anyone else. To anyone reading this with a plan to go out shopping on Black Friday, please remember this. Be safe. Be kind. Accommodate those with you, even if it costs you your place in line at some store. No item is worth losing yourself to the shopping frenzy.

Credits

This post was written by Kayla and Eva. Eva's contributions, the story time section, were edited by Farren for coherence and readability. We hope ... not that you've enjoyed this post, but that you have learned something and gotten perspective from it. Thank you for reading.

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