Black Friday

Black Friday. Not just the day after Thanksgiving, but the day when a nationwide shopping frenzy begins. The one day of the year when retailers can move large quantities of their commercial goods to an unsuspecting consumer populace lulled into a buying trance by the previous night's dining--a large dosage of tryptophan. Yes, that's one of the behaviorial side effects of gluttonously stuffing our faces with turkey on that one Thursday night in late November. We become shopaholics. Lining up like lemmings outside big box stores waiting break through the doors and salivate over merchandise that--give or take a few items--would not benefit our lives if we happened to possess them. But our faculties are incapacitated by big signs promising large savings. We drink up what we see displayed in the storefronts. We become drunken dancers dancing to the delight of department stores. Commercialism at its finest.

We are fools. Fools for spending our hard-earned money on more needless crap in our lives. Do we really need that 90-inch LED TV with the latest 3D technology? Our smaller sets do just fine in entertaining us. Do we really need that expensive sportscar with the large red bow on top? Our smaller rust-bucket sedans do just fine in ferrying us from home to work and back again. Do we really need to buy our children the latest fad toys for Christmas when we know darn well that kids take care of them inversely proportionate to their cost. In other words, the more expensive the toy, then the more likely it will be savagely damaged and flippantly discarded by December 26.

Avoid it. For once in your life, just don't bother with Black Friday. It's a single day on the calendar as meaningless as Groundhog's Day. It's a time-consuming, energy-expending, money-wasting, emotionally-draining day much like Valentine's Day that leaves us bitter than when we first started. It's true, the notion of Black Friday as a national get-out-of-the-red holiday only pops up in the minds of retailers much like Halloween is seen as the mass-consumption candy manufacturers' one day out of the year for overcoming the disapproval of health-conscious parents to peddle their stale, sugary sweet concoctions and rot the teeth of millions of minor minions.

Don't shop. Don't go out Friday. Stay home. Keep your wallet fat and happy. The more money you save (and really "save"---not "save by spending" as retailers would have you believe), the better able you'll be to manage your personal finances. You don't need to buy any of the crap they're selling you. It's cheap quality, it's constructed of plastic, and it's probably made in China. Keep our precious, priceless, devalued dollars in the United States.

~Andrew K.