Black Friday: Our Newest National Sport

Good thing the NBA hasn’t started playing yet.  After all these months away from the game, I wouldn’t want them running up against our latest pastime.  It only comes once a year, and if you blink, you might get your head knocked off.  Though it’s not for the faint of heart, anyone can participate.
 

But there are rules.
Black Friday pillaging includes all six parts:  waiting in line, stampeding into the store, grabbing the item, keeping it safe while deflecting all negative action to pull it from your grip, seriously paying, and safely shoving it into your car. 

waiting to get inside

Believe me, it only looks simple.            

In 2008, 2,000 people broke the hinges off the doors of a Walmart on Long Island and trampled a 34 year old part-time employee to death.  They also trampled an eight-month old pregnant woman causing one of the most brutal abortions imaginable.

But hey, that was only one day in a single store.

I bet everyone’s heard about the gunfight at the OK Corral?  How about the one at a “Toys ‘R’ Us” in Palm Desert, CA, also in 2008? 
 

Two women got in a fight, and before you knew it their husbands pulled out their guns and started shooting.  One man missed and started chasing the other up the aisles toward the front as the customers ran screaming from the building.  Both men made it to the cash registers where they kept shooting the other before both died in front of their wives and kids.  (Oh yes, the children witnessed their fathers deaths).
It was a Christmas to remember.

Which makes Black Friday just the perfect kind of sport. You know how Americans love violence?  We’re a playful culture—wrestling, boxing, extreme sports like sheer ice climbing, edge-of-the-mountain biking, base jumping, and guns, guns, guns.

And Black Friday is simply a short conglomeration of everything mushed together, from midnight to noon—one 12 hour stretch, and it’s for everyone who wants to compete.  You don’t have to travel to Europe, Asia, Africa.  It’s all here at the mall!

So what’s a little pepper spray, a gunshot wound, a stabbing, and a heart attack among friends?

In a few hours it’s over, and people mourn when it’s passed.

Now they’ll have to endure an endless, repetitive, ordinary existence—until midnight Thanksgiving 2012, until the Xboxes are carted back to the front, and the doors break down, and the mobs bash through, and the bloody shopping begins anew.

So give a toast.  Joy to the season!  And to all who survive.