While many students were sleeping in after a Thanksgiving full of turkey and eggnog, the hardcore shoppers were rising to the alarm clock at 4 a.m.
You guessed it -- Black Friday. It's the one day a year everyone promises to avoid shopping because of all the crowds. And yet year after year, the stores have lines of coffee-driven shoppers rubbing their hands either from the cold or in eager anticipation of sale items.
It is hard to tell whether the stores are perpetuating the growing crowds. It could be the stores, with the sort of deals they offer and the hours they keep (one store opened at one minute after midnight).
It may well be that people are so eager to consume that they have made the real holiday Black Friday. Or perhaps the media decides how we will see things depending on what and how much coverage they give the so-called frenzy.
Anyone watching the news that day saw every news station airing melodramatic scenes of pandemonium -- crowds fighting one another just to get that really cheap laptop or lava lamp that is free after rebate.
Yet after a few minutes, I noticed that the only scene they showed was of some morons in Florida rolling around on the ground in what I can only assume is their idea of fighting.
But it did its job, since everyone standing around me said things like "Why would someone do that?" or "How could someone get that out of control over a DVD player?"
Of course, it is easy to claim the moral high ground when you were not the one who braved the long lines and early hour to get what you wanted.
The fact is, with every city having some sort of special sale, and with people flocking to them at atypical times of the day (often running on nothing but Krispy Kreme and Starbucks), a fight or two is inevitable.
Sure, with places like Wal-Mart, you're bound to have clientele that love a little drama: shouting across the store, swearing about how incompetent the store workers are just loud enough to be heard. The entertainment aspect of it is just about the only thing that keeps me awake, since the lines are about an hour long apiece, complete with little signs displaying estimated wait times, just like Disneyland.
But I'm sure that no matter how the media wants you to feel about it, there are no more altercations on Black Friday than at a typical day at Disneyland.
I have been in Los Angeles for the last two Black Fridays, and despite the fact that I do not speak the native tongue, I have suffered nothing more than wading through the litter that forms as the line progresses.
Granted, I am not after the $50 TV/VCR combo that won't last through the week, and I don't care about imitation Razor scooters that will throw you off at the first pebble you run across. But I am there every year, in the muck, watching as the drama that is not drama unfolds and the hair of the teenage cashiers grays prematurely.
I go out of necessity--grabbing up smokin' deals on computer hardware and components. So take tales of frenzy and mayhem with a grain of salt; believe it or not, it really is just shopping.
Darren Todd is an English literature graduate student. Send all loving hate mail to darren.todd@asu.edu.
