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On the first day of shopping, Black Friday, my true love said to me, "Don't try to go near the mall today. Wait until Monday or Tuesday." She knows I am not a shopper. I know she is one. I took her advice to heart. You should try to trust your experts.

By the way, "Black Friday" is called that because it is the busiest day in the year for retailers, the one that pushes them from red ink into the black. With my allergies to shopping I thought it was a metaphor likening shopping to the black plague.

Following my expert's advice took me to about the fourth day of shopping.  Well, that was the plan, but to tell the truth it was around the 12th day of shopping when I finally braved the Pyramid Mall. It is amazing how reasonable the crowds are when everyone else is at work. I am lousy at picking out gifts, so I agonized through several of the stores, determined not to leave until my list was finished.

Well, partly finished. There are tree gifts and stocking gifts. I managed to finish my tree gift shopping, and felt like I had accomplished something. On top of that I had walked from one end of Borders to the far end of Target and back, so I figured that I got some much needed exercise as well as a few gifts.

After some more agonizing and diddling away of time -- hey!  I'm a guy so there are some requirements for visiting the mall like ogling the plasma TVs in Best Buy, checking out cell phone accessories and looking at the radio-controlled toys in Radio Shack --  I went on a desperate kamikaze run to the Dollar Store. Stocking gifts are harder than tree gifts, because they not only have to be something you think the recipient will like, but they also have to fit into a sock. That is a killer restriction if you ask me. Nothing is small any more, at least not that small.

So here I am, writing this on the 21st day of shopping and I think I am done for the season. Of course that doesn't account for finding the actual perfect gift a day or so before Christmas. Then the whole plan goes out the window as I rip the bow off of one carefully wrapped gift to scoth tape onto the new hastily wrapped one.

I consider one of the crowning achievements of my holiday life to be the time I got the very first non-wheelchair parking space in front of the main entrance to the Carousel Mall in Syracuse on the morning of Christmas Eve a few years ago. Why I was crazy enough to go there on that day -- I still don't understand, but hey! Risk not, gain not and I can claim a parking victory denied to almost everyone else on the planet!

All of this begs the question. Why can't an allegedly reasonably intelligent person like me buy ahead during the year instead of waiting for an unbearable mounting panic to motivate me into the mall with wide eyes, palpitating heart and nearly faint from the pressure of required holiday aquisition? Is it just me?

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v1i22


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