Black Friday

There are very few advantages to living with small people who like to rise at 6am, but today I managed to reap a not inconsiderable benefit by dragging said persons down to GapKids-pre-10am-everything-is-50%off-sale as soon as I could stuff them into their clothes and the car with a nutritionally suspect but distractingly tasty granola bar for breakfast.

You see, even more important than feeling thankful on Thanksgiving Thursday, here in America, one is practically obliged to be at the shops as early as 3am on Black Friday so you can trample over other shoppers, possibly crushing them to death, in order to secure a plasma screen TV for $299.

It’s actually patriotic! Just ask Sarah Palin.

Being British, I was much more measured in my approach and only kicked aside a few elderly ladies shopping for their first grandchildren on my way to the toddler boy section.
Three was determined to choose his own clothes and promptly picked out six identical shirts in red with a fire engine on them in size 12-18 months.

I congratulated him on his excellent taste and suggested he get his very own shopping basket and fill it up with all the things he wanted to buy. This suggestion was met with great enthusiasm by Three, a jealous complaint (soon appeased by a similar missive) from Six, and a really spectacularly unpleasant look from a sales assistant. Mainly, though, a tantrum was avoided and I could shop in relative peace.

I usually try to leave the children at home when I go shopping for them, but as Husband is away in the Galapagos Islands working (poor baby!), I had no choice, so at some level I abdicated responsibility for their behaviour. I am not exactly proud of this, but there are only so many balls a girl can juggle at a time.

Three battered ankles by zooming around with his basket on the floor, Six instigated a game of hide-and-seek in the racks with another girl, pulling clothes onto the floor willy-nilly, and I blithely pretended they didn’t belong to me. At one point Three tried to put a mannequin in his basket saying

“I like her, Mummy! She can sleep in my BED!”

I was a little alarmed by that.

Have you seen Guys and Dolls ??

All things considered, we were in and out of the shop in less than an hour, including the long wait in line to pay for our purchases. I was very happy to have kitted out both children for the winter for well under $150 and neither of them seemed to notice that we didn’t put anything from their baskets through the till.  It was fairly painless as these things go.

However, I couldn’t help but feel as we walked out of the mall and I saw literally hundreds of people carrying bags full of consumer goods for themselves and their loved ones, that so much of this stuff was going to spend a very short time with its new owner, and such a long time in the rubbish.  By next Christmas, most of those gifts will be junk. I can think of very few things I got last year that I’m still using and loving, can you?

My mother had a science teacher who gave her a definition of dirt as
“Matter out of place” and this has stayed with her all her life, and me, too.

I think that applies to rubbish, too.

And yet, every single component of every single thing we throw away is made of some raw material that was assembled in a factory, probably somewhere far away, and it took energy to make it – oil? Coal? And someone got paid enough, or not enough, in good or not good enough conditions to create this thing and it went in a ship to arrive at my house. I loved it for a minute, then I threw it away. Now it’s in a landfill leaching chemicals into my community. Or I shipped it back to someone else’s community who is poorer than me and they can get sick because I don’t know them. Sometimes the things I buy are made of materials that are actually in short supply but nobody tells me about that because I, and my dollars are not in immediate danger. |
My dollars are very, very important and that is why I must be lured to the mall at all  costs.

And look! It the machine works! Here I am, with the most important things I own at 7am, and I didn’t even feed them properly. They could even be, just in this moment, as hungry as the people who made their clothes.
Lovely synergy there, MTFF.

But you know, I’m not all bad. I managed to leave with only what they need to wear this winter. I did not buy any consumer electronics. I did not buy any CPCMIC*. I did not even buy stupidly hopeful items of clothing for Husband that he will thank me politely for and then put in the back of the closet like he does every year.

*Cheap Plastic Crap Made in China

I really am going to put my money where my mouth is this Christmas, and if you’re on my present list, you’re either going to be getting a flock of chicks or part shares in a goat.

The best part about this gift is that you won’t even have to look after them! Someone else will do it for you, and on top of that you will be feeding a family who will in turn feed others as their livestock increases.

Six was ‘given’ a flock of chicks last year and she was utterly ecstatic. It’s a beautiful way to teach a child about giving, sharing, and also about life cycles and sustainability.

Highly recommended.

www.heifer.org