Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day or Maybe I’m Just Popping off to the Store for Some Milk Day

Only once in my entire life did I go to a Boxing Day sale.  See, there was a girl I was really attracted to and after having coffee with her one night about a week before Christmas, I reluctantly agreed to go with her.  It was loads of fun, she assured me.  Before that, I found the idea of rushing around a store with hordes of others, looking for deals on radios and such to be crazy nonsense, like being in a Japanese gameshow.

Oh my God.  Holy sweet Jesus.  Never did I imagine the absolute madness that was about to happen.  At least in a Japanese game show, I'd get a prize at the end of it.

I grew up in Canada with a traditionally English mom.  Needless to say that comporting myself in a dignified manner was a key component in my upbringing.  Please and thank you were mandatory, even with people who did not return the favour.  Being helpful, courteous, considerate and polite was expected.  Being short of the mark in any respect brought about severe disappointment.  Even when I was furious with a store’s lack of service, my mother still expected me to behave in a civilized and conscientious manner.  The notion that I was to go to a public store and run around, crashing into displays and shoving other customers, yelling and screaming to save money on a VCR (remember those?) would have been unthinkable.  My mother would have been mortified into terminal embarrassment.  

We arrived at an electronics store about an hour before opening, and there’s already a sizable line-up.  I can line-up patiently, but I’m unsure what I’m doing there.  I don’t really want anything… I mean, of course I want big screen TVs and such, but I don’t want to spend the sale price on them, let alone the full retail price.  There is a wish-list of CDs (remember those?) I wanted, so I hope I can save a bundle there.  That and I was spending time with a really cute girl that I liked, so I was willing to make a few sacrifices.

T-minus 15 minutes and the crowd is cold and restless.  Half-hearted chanting begins.  I’m kind of embarrassed to be there.  Five minutes later, the up-to-that-point orderly line breaks down and the people converge en masse at the doors.  I no longer want to be a part of this, and I let others go ahead of me.  I don’t want to be between glass and a large crowd of restless people.  The girl I was with tried pulling me in the middle of the crowd.  I compromised and came half as close as I intended to.

The doors open, and the people rush inside.  I move along, or I will get trampled.  The girl and I get separated. I make my way inside and immediately evacuate to a quieter corner of the store and watch the craziness.  People are running, knocking into displays, shoving each other.  In hindsight, it probably wasn’t that bad, but at the time, it seemed like utter madness.  Workers are trying in vain to bring out the promised merchandise, but are jostled aside as people furiously paw it like flesh-hungry zombies.  Boxes and plastic are flying.  My heart starts beating fast and I’m being overwhelmed by the fight or flight reflex.  I want to punch and kick everyone around me.

No, I said to myself. Calm yourself. You will get through this.  I'll buy you a drink when this is all over.

I walk purposefully toward the CDs.  There isn’t space enough to squeeze by anywhere.  I’m getting jostled at all sides and my heart is beating faster and faster.  Everything becomes one gigantic clusterfuck.  I cannot move.  Fuck calm.  I am starting to panic. 

Frantically, I spy an opening in the crowd and bolt.  I am trying to find her, but cannot.  I don’t want to ditch her, but there is no way I am staying here.  After cruising for about 5 minutes, weaving and dodging the crowd, I see her in amongst the computers, looking at the printers, her cheeks flushed and frothy.  I got to admit, never did she look so hot, but I am in disbelief.  The store looks like a bomb went off in there.  Unbelievably, there are even more people coming in.  I’m not sure how there can be any more people there without there being some kind of fire hazard.  I feel like I’m on the verge of hyperventilating.  Over the cacophony of shouting and the store’s music on the PA system I shout at her:

‘HEYIMGONNAGETACOFFEEILLSEEYOUINAWHILEOK?’

‘WHAT?!’

‘GOTTAGO!GOTTAGO!’

And that was it.  I got out of the store, breathed deeply, treasured my space and went for breakfast.  And that was pretty much that.  I talked to her a couple of times in the halls at university, but we never had much to say after that.  If that was a date, it was a bad one.

I live in Canada, so I was at work and largely immune to the effects of Black Friday, although the phenomenon is starting to creep here as well.  Lots of fellow Winnipeggers will be flocking to Fargo or Grand Forks or Minneapolis this weekend to partake in the baffling madness to save a hundred dollars on a television.  In response, local businesses are attempting to key up their own version of Black Friday here to keep Winnipeggers shopping local.

Ugh.  I’d rather workers not be trampled to death for the sake of a bargain, but it’s difficult to see how this trend won’t continue.  I can’t believe people could or would subject themselves to this kind of insanity for the sake of saving a few bucks.  I’m very much of the church if I don’t absolutely need it, I probably won’t buy it.  For all of their faults, I was blessed with parents who called bullshit on the panicky, gotta have it mentality that these stores cultivate around the holidays.  I glad that I’m not out there fighting with the money-clutching masses, I’ll stay inside with a stiff drink thank you very much.  Just pretend to be happy with the can of pistachio nuts I got you from the gas station, and you don't have to get me anything at all.  Agreed?  Thank God for that.  I'll even do a roast and potatoes on the big day.  But if you want anything else, you're welcome to cook it yourself.

What disturbs me the most is not how people react in situations like that… I can tell you first hand that I was a hair’s width away from seriously beating someone.  Not because I wanted what they had, but because thats what happens in wild, unruly mobs. All sense and order breaks down.  What disturbs me is that, judging by the media reports on Black Friday, it was a 'huge success'.  Huge success?  Ordinarily rational human beings pepper spraying and stabbing each other for video games is a mark of success?  I think it's profoundly sad that we've allowed ourselves to be worked up to such a degree that we're literally fighting over waffle makers.  If I caught my six year old behaving that way, he'd be headed off to the naughty corner.  Not that I'd worry about it, because he wouldn't be behaving this way.


So I've embraced Buy Nothing Day.  But the thing is, not once in the ten years I've made up my mind to buy nothing on Buy Nothing Day have I ever bought nothing.  Ever.  I've always bought something, whether it was bread or milk, or when I smoked, cigarettes, or even just a pack of gum.  I'm not a very good progressive.


No, to hell with it.  No Christmas shopping on Black Friday.  That's a fair compromise.  I feel better already.


Now, if you'll excuse me I need to get some milk.

Hi There

Hi there.

Unlike most people in Winnipeg, I actually enjoy this time of year.  There is a particular sense of doom that grips the psyche in the late fall, especially after the clocks go back and it’s dark here at 5 in the afternoon.  Soon there will be bitter, driving winds, shoulder-high snow drifts, plummeting temperatures.  Bring them on I say.  Rarely does it bother me, at least until after Christmas.  And then winter seems like a journey through an endless black tunnel, your only companions being despair and frostbite.

But I dig this time of year.  Now is the time of year to catch up on reading.  To sip hard liquor, watch old movies, sit in pubs until the wee hours imbibing with old friends and play board games or watch ‘the game’ on TV, or snuggling with a girlfriend and watch Britcoms.  Even with Christmas rapidly approaching, I don’t (refuse) to feel the pinch.  Even in amongst the last few shopping days, I Am Calm.

Back in my late teens and early twenties, when I judged the quality of life by how much I drank and how many embarrassing stories I could rack up in a weekend, my absolute favourite memories were of this time of year, walking home from a party or a club or someone’s place and being enveloped in the darkness and crisp air and the deadening silence of a layer of fresh-fallen snow.  I was in the weird netherspace of inebriation and sobriety, after the high but before the hangover.  It literally felt like I had stepped from the boring work-a-day world into an enchanted fairly tale land.  I was always alone.  I didn’t want to share this with anyone.  I still feel like this today and I’m 35.

For me, this is the time of year to both take stock of things and to go forward.  To both reminisce and make plans for the future. 

I look back on the past year, and I can honestly say it is both the best and worst year of my life.  I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it is accurate.  I’ve rediscovered my true self after years of suppressing it for the sake of a dead marriage.  But that exacted a terrible toll, one that my sons, especially the older one, has had to pay.  He did not take me leaving well. One can never expect a six year old to take daddy leaving well, but he took it particularly hard.  He blamed me, his mom and himself in equal measure.  I wish I could tell him the truth about what happened, but he'd be too young to understand.  Actually, I do think he knows what happened, but is too young to process.  He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and makes himself responsible for so much.  He's six.  But he's a good kid and smart and made of a steel that isn't present in either myself and especially not his mother.  He's going to need a lot of help on his way to adulthood, but I will help him on his way.  There will be times that he'll hate me.  That's okay.  All kids need to hate and resent their parents from time to time.  But I will always be there.




It is snowing outside.  Slowly, all traces of grass are disappearing.  Soon, if not now, there will be no green for five months.  It is time to hunker down, keep warm and stay sane.  Welcome all!