Grey Saturday

In the past few years I've been alerted by the steadfast diligence of our great national media to a growing national habit dating to the founding of Alaska or to 2005, I'm not sure. It is called Black Friday. It sounds like something fun- a seance, a take your favorite dress to work day, or a gathering storm, but it is also a day to shop at stores I never go to, apparently at four a.m. According to the fine reporting by the numerous competitors of The Boca Union Sentinel, it is not just a great day out with the family, but an accurate measure of the vitality of our great nation's economy. When seven thousand people wait on line to get into Macy's Herald Square two hours before sunrise, it is not a sign of the end of civilization, but a joy for corporate retailers.

I wonder what one hopes to find at an hour normally reserved for sleep or cow milking. I realize that a hundred dollars off a t.v. is an alluring prospect, but doesn't Macy's sell sweaters, wallets and gift certificates? All day, every day? Sweaters aren't that expensive.

In the name of research, this intrepid reporter braved the shopping crowds, about thirty-six hours after the dawn of- say it with a hoarse voice and an overenunciated "l"- BLACK FRIDAY. I had a few small goals for my excursion to Boca Town Center. Or is it Centre? The prize to be collected in exchange for a few hours among crowds of humans, rare and difficult to spot in the gated community which currently houses the (not very) intrepid reporter, is a bathing suit, perhaps a wallet.

The wallets did not meet the exacting standards of this reporter. The wallet was to be taupe or bone, as smooth as a calf's kissable forehead, and large enough to carry a canvas and hand pistol in addition to the usual change and half-torn dollars bills. The search is not over. However, I will at last be able to bathe in the sea or swimming pool attired in the manner of most women, wearing two tiny strings of cloth rather than one single kerchiefy type thing. For at last I have found a bikini, two matching pieces in my size, and sensibly priced.

I hadn't worn a bikini for years before trying it on in the dressing room at Macy's, and I was surprised by how horrible I looked. But I bought it, because it was Juicy Couture, marked down to twenty bucks from, like, a million or whatever, and if there's anything I was taught by my family, it was that you don't pass up a bargain. Or maybe I learned this on my own, the same way I learned how to cook, ride a bike, change the oil in my car and play guitar. The balmy shores of the Atlantic await!