You know that I couldn’t endure Black Friday without having a few “What are this?” moments. I love Black Friday. You get deals on deals on deals. Not to mention, you get to almost forget your manners for one day and it’s nearly acceptable.

Let’s see. Where to begin?

I entered the insane asylum that was “Belk” today and was frightened for my life. I didn’t get in any fights, thankfuly, but I probably wasn’t the southern gentleman I should have been either.

My grandmother was one of the brave souls with me. She basically told me to pick out any clothes I wanted for Christmas and she would get them for me, which was genius of her when you think about it (I get exactly what I want, she has good gifts to give me for Christmas, and she doesn’t risk committing murder to get said gifts.).

Anyway, I crawled through a pile of sweaters and somehow came out unscathed with a couple my size. After slithering through other parts of the men’s section and picking up a few more items (at drastically reduced prices), I needed to pick up a couple things for some other people. It was then that I invented a new Olympic event: men Christmas shopping in the women’s department. I’m not that out of shape, but I was almost pushed to my limits physically and mentally in there! I discovered three types of men in the women’s department: those who were being dragged around by their significant others, those were actually buying clothes to wear (I’m not joking), and those who were running around frantically trying to find something to give as a gift for a woman and obviously didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I fell under the latter category.

After finally picking out something, we all proceeded to check out. This was when a very confused old man tried to check out as well. Bless his heart, he didn’t have all of his gears working properly. Instead of going to the back of the mile-long line, he went directly to the front. The woman he cut in front of gave looks that could melt ice. The man finally got moved to the back by his caretakers, who didn’t look much better than he did.

What are this? Why do we do that? Yes, we get great deals on Christmas presents to give to others but let’s be reasonable. We spend a day full of love and happiness being thankful for what we have. Then the next day, the norm is to forget that we’re civilized people in order to get the things we do not have. Senseless as it may be, Black Friday comes but once a year, and when else are we supposed to let out our frustrations while simultaneously getting things for others?