Sleeping through the Blackness of Friday

I’d like to express my apologies to the retail industry for not leaving my mark on Black Friday. Thursday evening I returned home from Thanksgiving dinner at Joan’s and promptly fell into a tryptophan-induced coma by 10 o’clock. I had no intention of setting my alarm to go shop at an hour when only vampires are awake. The only expenditure I made on Friday was at the drive-thru at Chick-fil-a when Jacob decided that sounded good for lunch. At 2 p.m.

I have shopped the day after Thanksgiving before and sure, I lived to tell about it, but I couldn’t think of anything I needed to buy that would make me go fight the crowds at the mall or local discount department store. No one even asked for a Wii at our house. In fact, I hadn’t made a shopping list, so I didn’t even know what to look for. Therefore the ads remained untouched in the newspaper on the table and are now in the recycling bin.

Maybe it’s all those years working retail that has scarred me. In high school and college, I dreaded the holidays, particularly Christmas Eve, when all the men would realize they couldn’t put off shopping any longer and finally braved the department stores in search of the perfect gift for their girlfriend or wife. I worked in lingerie for several years and, trust me, playing 20 questions about what a woman you’ve never met might wear/like/not return because she’s too humiliated to is not fun. Me: Is she about my size? He: No, bigger. Me: Yeah, I got it.

Tomorrow I will try to make amends with the economy and buy some gifts. In an effort to save the publishing industry with aspirations that I’ll have a book or two on the shelves one day soon before I die, I am joining a grassroots campaign to buy books as gifts this year. I’m meeting The Writing Women (Julie, Joan and blog-less Elizabeth) at the new Legacy Books in Plano and then we’ll lunch. We want to check out the new, independent bookstore that recently (and quite optimistically) opened its doors in a market replete with going-out-of-business signs.

So, if you are looking for a gift that sure to fit someone of any size, shape, or reading level, buy books this holiday season and log your purchases here. A book might not exercise your body like a Wii, but it sure does wonders for your brain.