Crazies at it again

So here I am, after picking up parts for our small business easily, on Friday morning without any traffic and being very peaceful (it's good for B2B work, too, to save money and see no traffic at brick and mortar places), I join a close friend who is running the Rock n Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon next week in a tiring 90-minute cardio and weights workout, before heading back to the shop at lunchtime, all of which came just a day after I disappointed myself being sixteen seconds slower than last year's turkey trot (my tenth).

Meanwhile, the looniness of the big-box stores and malls with “Black Friday Doorbusters” rears its ugly head with land-rushes worse than the “sooners” before 23 April 1889. Stores turn into Krzyzewskiville on Thanksgiving, some even piling the lines with tents and sleeping bags after lunch, waiting for the 20.59.53 ignition of the first red light, all the way to having the five red lights turn off at 21.00.00, or others with the same procedure at 21.59.53 or 23.59.53. Some places the lights were on at 4.59.53, but they were mostly malls and those who turned on the red lights later later were late-comers with few shoppers except for those with sense.

Those parked under the starting gantry watching the five red lights come on and running immediately to the department of the store where they wanted to buy the must-have item within tenths of the lights extinguishing were the ones who showed little class. In Los Angeles, a woman used pepper spray, typically used ins self-defence against stalkers, to spray those trying to purchase a video game system at deep-discount prices. In Arizona, a shopper hid a video game in his clothes, which led officials to worry a shoplifter or was a terrorist, since homicide bombers load explosives under clothes in the acts of terror, resulting in his beating. In North Carolina, shootings took place at malls. The numerous violence of Black Friday with shoppers standing outside as if they were in Krzyzewskiville, watching the red lights at the gantry prepare for their five-second rundown, has gone too far. We have lost our standards of decency.

What gives? Oh to just do a Turkey Trot (27:42) with one friend and then a hard workout with another on the ensuing Friday instead of being packed at the “worst day of the year in the malls” ensures knowledge that there are things more important, such as health and a day at work, instead of the obsession that has taken place. Might track clubs seriously consider Black Friday half marathons starting at 5 AM to keep real runners on course and not in the malls? ◙