Making a list and checking it twice

I noticed it earlier this week, when the television meteorologists were giving the long range forecast for "the week's end and the weekend," and all they said about Friday was that it will be 50° with occasional rain showers.

Friday, as in the Day After Thanksgiving.  

My, how things have changed. From the late 1980s until just recently, the Day After Thanksgiving was known as Black Friday, as in, that's when retailers will suddenly get back in the black.  (The first law of owning any sort of store or mercantile establishment is to claim you lose money every day.  The greatest example is those stores at the beach that sell you towels, t-shirts, hats, sunblock, and inflatable sea serpents at unbelievably jacked prices. Every year, as they fold up their tents after Labor Day, with straight faces they tell the news reporters that "this summer was a disaster, we hardly broke even, I don't know how we can survive in this economy," and they, next Memorial Day, guess who's back out there, hawking their wares?)

OK, so you can believe it if you wish, that none of these merchants make a nickel until holiday shopping begins. The thing is, Black Friday got to be so crazy for a while, they started holding it on Thursday instead! All the big stores would allow their employees time enough to have their Thanksgiving with their families and even a quick slice of pie before opening the big box at 5 or 6 and allowing the shopping frenzy to begin. 

And on Friday itself, the tv news helicopters would hover over the mall, reporting on available parking spots ("Attttttt White Marsh Mall, by the Sears entrance, a blue Mercedes is backing out of a spot...and two spots are about to vacated down by J.C. Penney on the upper level..."). It was mayhem. Some of you who to this day cling to your chubby-cheeked little dolls from Christmas, 1984, may have heard your parents describe their valiant service in the Cabbage Patch Kids War. This took place just two short years after the Falkland Islands War, and was fought in every toy store and department store in the land, as moms and dads fought to outflank their neighbors in order to purchase a coveted doll that sort of looked like Telly Savalas. 

And then came Amazon.

And what used to be called Black Friday is now Black November, as American commerce adjusts to the new way of shopping - not just for the holidays, but for everyday needs. I can't tell you how many times this year I have needed something - broad-tip felt markers, kitty litter, bagel chips, all vital items for life around this house -  and found nothing except for in the warm embrace of Amazon, which has everything!

And brick-and-mortar retailers - that's the term for "people with stores" -  have figured out how to fight back, and that's by starting their Christmas sales as soon as the last of the Labor Day empty beer cans are hauled out.  

The National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics (whoever they are) say that they estimate 166.3 million people will shop between yesterday and this Monday, the 28th, Cyber Monday. 

Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year. The name derives from the long-ago days when very few people had computers at home, but they did at work, so the Monday after Black Friday, they would rush to work and go on "Shoes. Com" or "Blazers4Less.com" and finish off their shopping lists. There were all sorts of charts showing that office productivity was was down on that day.

So, what started as, "let's look on the computer and see if we can find just the right rifle for Uncle Leroy" has become, "Hey! Just for something different, let's go to a store and look for Leroy's present!"

Or at least, that's the hope.