I'm speechless

No, I'm not. I lied.

Listen, I'm as much of a consumer as the next American. Really. I like shopping; I like buying things that I don't need and won't even want by the time the receipt is in my hand. I do my part to bolster the economy - inasmuch as my limited income allows - and I do it happily (inasmuch as my brain allows).

But I've never seen anything like I saw last night.

I've been camping out in the Wal-Mart parking lot since being evicted from Wrightsville Beach, and while it lacks something in the way of ambiance, it gets the job done well enough (it's not a terribly challenging job). Last night I spent most of the night there - what with the holiday and all; everything being closed and me without a lot of options - and while it struck me that it might be a little more crowded than usual as it got late, I had no idea what was actually happening.

I took the dogs for a fairly long walk around 11:00.

(Our route, incidentally, took us past an Old Navy, where an enormous line had been forming for what I suppose must have been quite a while, since the people at the front were equipped with camping chairs and the like. No tents, thank God - that would've been more thai could handle. Anyway, I asked, but unfortunately I didn't receive a particularly satisfying answer. It was clear that the store was going to open at midnight, and the man pointed to a poster that said something about a dance party, but I wasn't able to gather the relationship between dancing, Old Navy and Black Friday.)

By the time i got back to Wal-Mart, the parking lot was full. And I mean, it was fucking full. I was parked in the furthest corner of the lot and Bubba was surrounded. I was beside myself.

(Okay, I'm sorry, but I can't listen to this anymore without saying anything and there's no one here to say it to, so I'm saying it here. There are three women sitting at the table in front of me. From what I can gather, two are mother and daughter and the third is a friend of the daughter. These women have been talking about the mother's diamond rings for twenty minutes - at least. Well, when she got married she only had this big a diamond and her husband spends all this money on golf and when she made a jokey little remark that if he was going to spend all that on golf, where was her carat? And can you believe it?! He said we could get it when he came back!! They got it on base [I think that's what she said], so it was tax free, but it was a very expensive ring. And this, of course, was after her first upgrade to a half carat. She was going to pass the rejected half-carat to her daughter, but the daughter doesn't care for gold, and blah blah blah. And then she started in on her pearls. Jesus Christ.)

Right, so anyway. I had to see what was going on, so I went inside. Holy shit.

(Oh my God. Now they're discussing the number of times that the mother "took a belt to" the daughter. The daughter is, maybe... 25. Where the fuck am I that people still hit their children with belts for Christ's sake? It would be one thing if it were some sort of secret family abuse secret, but clearly this is just chit-chat. I swear, by the time I get out of this state I'll be adding PTSD to my primary diagnostic axis.)

There were so many people!! They were gathered in these enormous clusters, just standing there like cattle; one huge crop of them (pardon my mixed metaphor) had these enormous boxes in their carts - trampolines, a closer look revealed. It took me ten minutes of wandering around to figure out that they were clustered around pallets of merchandise that wasn't being made available (its shrink-wrap cut open, that is) until midnight on the nose. I guess they chose whatever they wanted most and just hovered there, waiting. At 12:00 a voice came over the speakers, requesting that people remain calm and orderly, etc. and the frenzy began. I swear it was like they thought these things were going to disappear from the planet if they didn't get them into their carts right now. The checkout lines were obscene. Carts overflowing with gigantic boxes - televisions and basketball hoops and bicycles. It was a humbling demonstration of radical - or should I say fanatical - consumerism. Extremely entertaining. I just wandered around the store with a slack-mouthed, incredulous half-smile.

But.

They had a really good deal on a portable DVD player, and it hadn't occurred to me, but that was exactly what I needed. My laptop and monitor just require too much juice. They drain my extra battery in under two hours. The electronics sale didn't start until 5am though, so I went to sleep, figuring if I woke up before 11:00 and they had any left, I'd call my mom and ask for the money. I did, they did and she did. I almost had one of those shopping frenzy fist fights though.

The scene looks like this:
There's a kiosk in the electronics section - you know, the one with the cameras all around it - and people are forming a line along the counter. At the front of the line is a register, and just before you hit the register, there's someone to get your item. So you tell this first person what you want, then the person at the register rings you out. I'd been standing in line for... ten minutes maybe, waiting for the old lady who was supposed to be getting the item to determine whether or not they had any more of some particular camera that the person in front of me wanted. So we were at a standstill, just watching her while she looked around helplessly - not looking on the shelves or anything, you understand. She was just spacing out. While this is going on, I'm scanning the products behind the counter to see if they have what I want and I see one. Of course, right? One.

And then some woman walks up to the register from the other direction and I hear her ask for the "7-inch portable TV". The employees are confused, but I know perfectly well what she means and this bitch is not getting my DVD player. It took them a few minutes (while Grandma continues to wander aimlessly), but they figured it out eventually and the one remaining player was produced. "Ahem... Pardon me, but I've been waiting in line for that product..." I got ready to battle, but the woman at the register just said "Yeah, that's true," and that was the end of it. I would've gone to the mat for that baby, I'll tell you what. Not because I wanted it that badly - it just would've made a really good story. Anyway, anyone who doesn't know the difference between a TV and a DVD player doesn't deserve the outstanding bargain I got on it.

I'm pretty excited. It'll be nice to have something to do before I go to sleep other than play solitaire. (And anyone with a solitaire comment can just keep it to themselves.)

One last thing:
This is a really, really long post and I'm not going back over the whole thing to look for typos, errors, broken rhythms and the like. Deal with it.