Black Friday Virgin

I'm not exactly sure how I thought it would end.  I know how it began.

We drove to my in-laws house in northeastern Iowa on Thanksgiving Day, late as usual.  We did say we would be there around noon, but it was closer to 12:30, and when people are cooking food around your arrival, it's best not to be late.  I'm one of those horrible people who are ALWAYS late.  I get up with the best of intentions, truly, I do, but something usually goes awry.  This time, it was the toilet.

Everyone is in the van and George the Superpet is set up and ready for the lovely sweetness that is my friend who let him out on Thursday and Friday, and then one of the kids says, "I have to go to the bathroom".  Okay.  Better now than 30 minutes into the drive, right?  So I take said child into the house, who does their thing and then says, "MOM?  I don't want to flush because there is something weird in here, and I didn't do it."  Oh crap.  Literally.  Someone did some business earlier, and now it is alive.

WE NOW INTERRUPT THIS BLOG FOR
ONE OF MY FAVORITE SORORITY STORIES:
So occasinally someone in the sorority would drop a deuce so large it would merit all-house attention, because what is more Ripley's Believe it Or Not than a sorority girl with a huge crap?  A girl in our house discovered this Wonder of Science and did what was then called an "All House Buzz" on the buzzer system, essentially meaning "gather round".  Sisters filed into the bathroom one by one to see this anomaly, and one particularly sensitive girl stepped out and said, in a very panicky, breathy voice, "SOME HORRIBLE FRATERNITY BOY. HAS PUT. HORSE POOP. IN OUR TOILET!"  The poor sister who had the duty of House Manager at the time, Joan, had to take a coat hanger and break it up to get it to flush.  Ah, college memories. Thus concludes this somewhat gross and highly tangental story.  Let's return to Black Friday, shall we?

SO, one of the kids clogged the toilet, and Current Husband and I are fixing it while the kids are in the van, waiting to leave for Thanksgiving.  I look at CH and laugh, "Isn't this what you dreamed about on our wedding day?  Us, together, in the bathroom, unclogging the work of one of our offspring on the holidays?"  He smiled like, "NO." and then, toilet fixed, we took off for a nearly three-hour trip of kids bickering and various Ke$ha songs on the radio and CH's mom calling to see where we were because the food was almost ready.

The meal was served, and it was highly delicious.  My MIL is a kick-ass cook.  I brought an awesome bottle of chardonnay, and was well into it when someone brought up Black Friday.  My brother-in-law, Jeremy, and I had never been Black Friday shopping.  We discussed the fact that the only place to shop within an hour of where we were seated was Wal-Mart, located 15 minutes away in Prairie du Chein, Wisconsin.  Laughing, we looked at the Black Friday flier, and HEY! They have doorbusters at midnight, and then the good stuff goes on sale at 5 a.m.  NO ONE will be shopping at midnight on Thanksgiving in Prairie du Chein, right?  Jeremy and I decide to break our cherries.  We are going Black Friday shopping.  Everyone else says, "No effing way, have fun you freaks."  They loosen their belts and undo their top buttons and go to sleep.  At 10:50, Jeremy and I get into the van and head out for Wal-Mart.

The whole way there we are laughing about how we are going to be the only people there.  Who would shop at midnight on Thanksgiving Day?  We are CA-RAY-ZEE!  The mood is merry.  Then, we pull into the parking lot and look at each other.  What the hell.  The parking lot is packed.  It is 11:05 p.m.  This has to be a mistake.  We walk into the store.

Everything is cordoned off.  Wal-Mart employees are running around all panicky.  There are huge, shrink-wrapped cubes of product in the aisles, with big signs that say, "DOES NOT GO ON SALE UNTIL 12:01 a.m."  Some items are wraped in black and say, "DOES NOT GO ON SALE UNTIL 5 a.m."  People are literally standing around the cubes with their hands on them, as though it is a contest where if you are the last person with their hand on the car you win it.  I stop laughing.  I get a little nervous.  Jeremy and I sync our cell phones and split up.  I won't see Jeremy again until 12:45 a.m.

I get to the video game cube.  Hard-ass looking women are standing around it.  The predominant look is tightly curled perm with faded Disney-themed hoodie.  One woman growls, "I've been here for over an hour and I need a fucking cigarette."  Oh God.  It was like I was in prison all over again. 

One woman looks at me and says, I swear to you, "First time?"  I smile weakly and nod.  Do not make me your bitch, oh please, do not, I am a terrible bitch, I swear. 
"What are you here for?" she asks.
"Um, Modern Warfare 2 and NCAA 11." I wait.  Perhaps I should have gone with Ponyville.
"Well I'm hear for Red (something) Redemption, and you do NOT want to get in front of me!" she chuckles.  "This isn't MY first time!"
"Oh, I won't," I assure her.
"Let me give you some tips," she says.  "First, everyone here is nice now, but when midnight hits they will turn on you.  Second, grab your game and hold it to your chest, people will try to take it out of your hands.  Next, DO NOT put it in your cart.  Someone will take it out of your cart if they see it."
"Thanks," I say.  I'm grateful for the tips, but now I am actually scared I will get hurt.  I leave and try another area of the store.  It is the same EVERYWHERE.  Tabletop griddles?  Check.  Shark steam vac?  Check.  Fleece pajama bottoms?  Check.  I totally steer clear of the Barbie VW Bug and Full Size Trampoline areas, because I can see nothing good is going to happen there.  This is WISCONSIN.  What is it like at the Wal-Mart in downtown Detroit?  I head back to the games and manage to get back in position.
"It's the same everywhere, isn't it?" my girlfriend says knowingly.
"Yep."
"How long until midnight?" she asks.
"About 20 minutes."
"God, I need a fucking cigarette."

At 11:56 p.m., a manager starts to unwrap the shrink wrap on a cube about 4 cubes down from mine.  My girlfriend says, "I'm taking mine" and rips the plastic.  Absolute pandemonium breaks out, as women start tearing shrink wrap everywhere.  I stand, paralyzed, and a hand with yellowed fingernails hands me a copy of Modern Warfare 2 and NCAA 11.  If I had a cigarette, it would be hers.  I turn and run into a woman leaving the stack of Wizards of Waverly Place DS games, so I grab one of those and a Toy Story 3 and Zhu-Zhu Pets game for Wii.  And Cooking Mama Absolute Gardener.  And Tony Hawk Ultimate Urban Skater.

I start aimlessly wandering around the store, watching the mayhem over SpongeBob robes and 17 Again DVDs, listening to people talk about a woman who power-vomited all over the back of the games area, when I hear my name.  It is Jeremy, in line with Wii games and a Nerf gun set.  He says, "Get in line!  There are only 4 checkers!" and I walk the quarter mile to the back of the line.  The next half hour was a blur, as I watched people scramble for a place in line.  Fights broke out, people were angry, and young children were tiredly being pushed along by their parents.  And this was for the midnight sales, not the 5 a.m. rush with flat screen TVs, cameras, and computers!  Happy Birthday Jesus!  This is all for you!

We finally got in the van and left the parking lot, shell-shocked.  I told Jeremy about my prison bitch, and Jeremy said, "Oh, I have you beat.  I was back by the DVDs and a woman who looked like she was drunk started puking everywhere.  People were clearing away and telling her to get out, and one woman completely freaked out and started screaming at shoppers, DO NOT STEP BACK HERE!  LEAVE THIS PLACE!" I looked at Jeremy, stunned.  "I heard of this vomiting woman!  People were talking about her all over the store!  You SAW it??!"  Jeremy nodded solemly.  "I saw it, I smelled it, I will never get it out of my brain.  Then, ten minutes later, I saw her actually shopping, covered in her own puke."

I saved about $180 on games.  Jeremy saved about $100 on his Wii and Nerf items.  However, we both agreed this was our first and last Black Friday.  We decided neither of us has the Right Stuff to be a Black Friday shopper.  Next year, I'm having a third piece of pie, unbuttoning the top button, sleeping soundly and peacefully while others claw through the crowds.  If I must vomit on Thanksgiving, it will be in the relative comfort of my in-laws bathroom.

Other than that, we had a fabulous Thanksgiving, and much to be thankful for this year.  I hope yours was excellent as well!  Have a great week!

Assassination Vacation

This post was started in Dallas on the evening Sunday, November 22, but was delayed due to Youngest Daughter's ingestion of a 12-ounce bottle of Coke, which turned out to be the equivalent of letting her do a line of blow. Current Husband and I don't let the kids have soda unless it's a special occasion. This night turned out to be very special. YD was like Robert Downey Jr., on- AND off-set in "Less Than Zero". She spent the next five hours in the hotel room jumping on the couches, the beds, the carpet squares, her brother, her sister, her father and me. She was simultaneously asking to ride the elevators and use the ice machine, power-changing the channel on the 42-inch flat screen TV, and translating the hotel guest guide in Arabic. We survived, the blog did not. This is the delayed story.

We're on a vacation of sorts, and we decided to take the kids to a popular attraction. Was it Disney? Six Flags? The Zoo? Oh no. I took a page out of Sarah Vowell's book, Assassination Vacation, and took my impressionable young children to see the Sixth Floor Museum in the Texas School Book Depository Building in Downtown Dallas. On November 22. Because if one is going to show the children pictures of the 35th president getting killed, one should do it on the exact date so they get the full emotional impact.

It's important to take children to traumatic landmarks, because the subliminal message is: The world is an unpredictable place. If you don't listen to your parents, we can't be responsible for what might happen.

You may ask, "Why go to Dealey Plaza for Thanksgiving?" My parents live in the southernmost part of Texas, near South Padre Island and the Mexican border, which is a 22-hour drive from our home in the Quad Cities. It's been six years since our last visit south, because it has taken that long to forget what it's like to travel over the course of two days with children. So we loaded up the van, packed the juice boxes and snack packs, fired up the DVD player and charged all DS's and iPods, and pulled away from the curb.

The first eight hours weren't so bad. Then the batteries started running low on all of our diversionary tactics. That's when the touching began. With two children, you can guess who is touching whom. With three, it becomes the Bermuda Triangle of Touching - one never knows where it began or where it will end, and the trail of evidence seems to mysteriously disappear. CH and I also discovered that somewhere along the way, we taught the kids to speak loudly and carry a small, quickly concealable stick. I made CH pull over in Oklahoma, where I erected a barrier of pillows between the children, and then threatened them with physical violence through my clenched, frothing teeth. This bit of exemplary parenting was rewarded with my third Starbucks espresso beverage of the trip.

Finally, we arrived at the Dallas hotel, our halfway point. We unloaded the van, gave the children Ambien-laced cookies, and waited. (Just kidding, Department of Human Services!) The next morning, we woke them in time to make the complimentary continental breakfast and let them gorge themselves sick on cereal, fruit, yogurt, and English muffins, because three meals are unnecessary when one is free and bathrooms are scarce. It was time to go to Dealey Plaza.

As we approached the Texas School Book Depository Building in downtown Dallas, I got the butterflies in my stomach that only a seriously ill presidential-historian-pop-culture junkie will. I am a Kennedy freak. I rate my obsession with the Kennedys up there with my odd proclivities for the stories of Charles Manson, Patty Hearst, Jim Jones, John Lennon, Watergate, domestic terrorists, Jane Austen and the Twilight saga. (And skinny vanilla lattes. And food. And red wine. Okay, I have an obsessive personality.)

The kids had that lead feeling in their stomachs that only the children of a person who lights up when a National Historic Landmark sign for a Presidential Library passes will. They know they are in for a few hours of Mommy Telling Them About History. And not eating or drinking or going on rides or going to the bathroom or being allowed to talk about anything but history. Fun!

We got out of the car and I breathed in Dealey Plaza air. I could touch the building Lee Harvey Oswald touched. I could see the Grassy Knoll, and where those shadowy bastards who were never caught parked in the railroad yard. I put two cameras in my bag and we walked through the portal doors to the early 1960's.

The first thing I saw was a floor-to-ceiling color photo of JFK and Jackie in the convertible, waving, just before the first shot rang out. Jackie was in the bright pink suit and pillbox hat, red roses on the seat beside her, and both of them are smiling and waving. I was geeking out. I took a picture of the kids next to the wall and said, "...and this is right about when Mrs. Connally says 'You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President!' and then he gets shot the first time." I was thinking the kids didn't look appropriately impacted by this statement when I noticed the sign: "Cameras are not allowed in the museum." WHA?!?!??!?

Why are people not allowed to photograph the JFK assassination exhibit!? I think it is a conspiracy. Do they fear that the information inside the museum will make it to the outside, and then the truth will be known? Do they think if I have photos of the museum it will deter me from returning and bringing my friends? Are they worried that someone MIGHT make their family pose with Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby for their Christmas card photo? Because I had no intention of doing something that crass. (I saved that for the Grassy Knoll, of course.)

While the other two children looked alternately bored and confused, Youngest Daughter got into the spirit. She did the audio tour with me, where we donned earphones and listened to a guided tour of the museum. However, she became impatient around the Cuban Missile Crisis and started moving ahead. She would turn her little First Grader face up to me and say, "I'm going to The Race to Parkland Hospital, okay?" and I would have to say, "Oh no, honey, the President has to be shot first, at The First Shot Rings Out, just wait a minute."

It started to dawn on all of the children that this was a real person when they saw the little movie where Caroline and John-John come out with Jackie and John-John salutes his father's casket as it goes by. So sad. Of course I am crying, which traumatizes the children further. CH uses this opportunity, in a totally selfless act, to take the kids to the Hard Rock Cafe for beer (for him) and Cokes (for the kids) and nachos and to watch the Dallas Cowboys game. Oldest Daughter stays with me, because she wants an iTouch for Christmas, and she knows who buys the gifts.

I wander around the exhibit for another hour, retrieve my historically deficient family, and make them stand and look at the large "X" on Elm Street where the limo was when the fatal shot rang out. We then walk to the Grassy Knoll, and past all of the Conspiracy Theory nuts who bring out their tri-fold cardboard displays and self-published books and ask for tips. CH theorizes this is to fund pot smoking in their mother's basements, because it is not being spent on quality displays or fancy clothes.

As it was the anniversary date of the assassination, there were a lot of people milling about Dealey Plaza. Oddly enough, on the way back to the car, we saw about 100 people getting ready to do a bike ride on the path of the assassination, and they were all dressed in tweed and looked Scottish. When I asked what they were doing, they said, in a Scottish brogue, "The Tweed Ride. It's something we do." Oh.

When we got back to the hotel room, I asked the kids what impressed them the most. Oldest Daughter said, "That the government kept operating, and the next president was sworn in right away." Hello, iTouch! Middle Son said, "That it isn't for sure that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone." You, too, may get an iTouch! Youngest Daughter said, "That Dallas, Texas has so many Scottish people." Okay, that may be worth a Puppy in My Pocket Standard Poodle Newborn Center. CH said, "That the Cowboys managed to win that game." No sex for you, CH.

(I would like to take this opportunity to note that unbeknownst to me, The Edge, my next husband, was in Dallas a few days later at the Thanksgiving Day Cowboys game. I am quite sure that he not only would have preferred to attend the Sixth Floor Museum with me, but would have given interesting theories on the Grassy Knoll shooters while noting how stunning I looked in front of the Who Was Jack Ruby? display. But I digress.)

But for me it was being present in a place about history that irrevocably changed the world. If you asked people how they felt in the days after the assassination, many of them said they felt like the world was ending, or that it seemed the future was uncertain, and yet, here we are. Still okay, and able to bore our children in National Historical Landmarks. It gives me hope that someday I can look proudly on as my children force my grandchildren to trudge through the September 11 Memorial in New York or Pennsylvania and make them respect the past and embrace their future. And reward them with sugary drinks that will make them lose their minds. It is the Circle of Life.