Commercy

 When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

This came to me the weekend before Thanksgiving as I strolled through Best Buy with my son. My son who lived through his share of Black Fridays. Not as a customer, mind you. He was that young man in the blue shirt attempting to hold back the throngs of rabid consumer zombies with his grit, determination and the promise of a catered dinner when it was all over. 

Those days are now in his memory book, as exemplified by his quiet assertion to me that a certain forty-eight inch 4K TV looked "like a really good deal." This coming from a young man who used to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of the day after Thanksgiving. 

I had my own brush with the surreal event known as Black Friday. This was back when there were a certain number of stores that even bothered to open their doors while there was all that football left to watch and leftovers to consume. In the video rental business, this was a day when wild-eyed parents showed up demanding "something for the whole family" when the only thing left on the shelves was three of the eight episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Explaining to these holiday victims that some of our customers had reserved their copies of Overboard and Top Gun ahead of time only increased their fury. I was the last thread of connection to sanity. And I didn't have "anything by Disney that we haven't seen twenty times already."

And now, my son who lived through an even more intense version of this barely human behavior, was ready to plunk down his own hard-earned money on a screaming hot deal in the very store that gave him all those PTSD dreams. It should be pointed out that this was also world that has adopted the term "Black Friday" like "Sale-A-Thon" and "Christmas In July" as if they made some sort of logistical sense. It was almost a week before the actual day of "door-busters," but the frenzy had already begun. Without actually having to bust any doors. 

A kinder, gentler Black Friday. 

So where's the fun in that?