Mission shopping

Tents. Sleeping bags. Stoves. All these and more were on display on 'Black Friday' (which is the Friday after Thanksgiving, for the uninitiated). No, not on store shelves, but outside the stores. Undeterred by the freezing night, people were camped on the sidewalks outside Circuit City, Best Buy, Walmart and every other such store looking for a killer 'deal' on things they might or might not really want. Yours truly was there too, just to experience one of the craziest (in my opinion!) things in the US of A. I found it extremely amusing to see all these people huddled up there, some reading, some sleeping, some talking (our desi group was, of course, the noisiest :-)), and others just sitting quietly, ostensibly dreaming about the untold killings they were going to make in a few hours!

I would like to specifically mention two things that I personally found really interesting outside Circuit City that night: First, there was this group that actually had a portable stove with them to cook (or reheat) food as they waited (see pic) I realize it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do considering the temperature and time but now, those were men on a mission! Next, there was this guy who stepped out of a large Mercedes Benz and joined the hordes. Well, come on, if you have enough greens to own a Merc, do a coupla hundred bucks really matter that much?! All I can say is, it takes all kinds..!

If it were Madras, some young lad would have set up a small tea 'kadai' there to cash in on the tired shoppers but well, this isn't Madras so there was nothing around (maybe next year I should try this!). Anyway, the lines steadily grew longer until finally the doors opened at some weird time of the morning (?). The shoppers shopped, the billers billed and everybody lived happily ever after. Or so I presume, since a warm bed pulled me back home way before all this happened :)