I’ve never been one to go Black Friday shopping. I admit, I’ve been tempted several times before, but it’s never happened. The thought of getting to a store early and waiting in a long line, has never been appealing.

Avi, my twelve-year-old daughter, learned about Target offering Lilly Pultzer clothing, and asked if we could go.

Sure I thought, why not? The sale was on a Sunday, and the store opened at 8:00AM. Since she has Sunday school at 9:00AM, we planned to go to Target by eight, grab a few items, and have time to swing by Starbucks on the way to school.

It would be fun.

It was a good plan.

But, sadly, not good enough.

When we got to Target, it was around 7:45AM, and the line was over the river and through the woods long. Apparently, people had been there for hours. Hours. Who were these people?

But we patiently waited in line, planned to divide and conquer, and finally, made it into the store.

Avi went to the children’s clothing section. I went to the Women’s department, where there was NOTHING.

Not one item left.

It was 8:03AM.

I found Avi, and was happy to see she somehow managed to score some things to try on.

Everything else was gone.

GONE.

We followed the crowd to the other departments but all the items had been wiped out. There were no other discount Lilly treasures to be found.

It was 8:07AM.

We made our way to the dressing room, where we fought the crowd that lingered  hoping a reject would be tossed out and up for grabs. There were women with carts full of clothing, home goods, and accessories. Many people had several of the same items, and weren’t shy about announcing they planned to sell the items on ebay.

By 8:45, we were at Sunday school with our coffee, and trying to recover from the morning chaos. And chaos it was.

If this experience was anything like Black Friday, no thanks, I’ll pass.

But we did have fun together, a lot of laughs, and that’s worth more than anything we could have purchased.

Finding meaning every day,

Dara