I am a survivor

This morning I awoke to my mother kindly saying, "Get your ass out of bed." Lovely. It put me in just the mood to jump right up rejuvenated after a whole four hours of sleep and stand at attention. Actually it was 10:30 a.m. (Though my mom informed me it was 11 a.m. -- a typical add-a-half-hour ploy she used throughout my high school days to guilt me awake and instantly motivate me.) The four hours of sleep was totally my fault since I stayed out until 5 a.m. playing cards (damn that $20 lasted a loonnng time) , chatting with friends about their current struggles and getting a jump since my car battery chose to die in someone else's driveway. And I did promise my mother, in a post Thanksgiving Day stupor, that I would go shopping with her Saturday. I just thought it would be in the afternoon, after she got back from going to my grandmother's which she typically does Saturday morning. But not this Saturday morning. Oh, no. My mom was up and armed. The little grunt (me) that needed to take all the flack from blue haired old women steam-rolling down isles and scout ahead for the shortest checkout lane better damn well be up and holiday cheery. Instead, this grunt grunted out of bed already defeated. By 1200 hours Zulu time we hit Target and other stores with the full frontal assault and carnage witnessed in the first 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. SUVs and mini-vans jammed packed with willing shopping mall marines sped full throttle into jammed spots, being shaken occasionally by the incoming stray shopping cart and wading into the outbound stream of holiday shopping blitzes. Women screamed and children cried and I thought, "Holy crap we aren't even the first wave." It was a brutal day. By 1230 Zulu we nearly filled one cart full of this its and thats its. We beat a little old lady out of the "buy 2 Care Bears for $5" by mere minutes. We got the last pair of these "precious" little gloves for another little second cousin. I found camaraderie with other green recruits, husbands and sons forced to help their wives and their mothers shop. We looked at each other with the condolences and respect few men know. I even saw one man my dad's age who is a family friend shopping with is wife for his kids who are my age (my dad, the lucky bastard, worked today. He gloated about this all evening too). He gave me a pat on the back and simply smiled a sad smile that reflected years of such experiences. And the experience did not end until 1800 hours. The cost of the holiday shopping war was astronomical. My mother spent oodles of money. We lost some "great deals" battles and won others. I am only slightly battered. I await my purple heart for a calf bruised by a cart some woman slammed into me while trying to rush to be number 100 in the checkout line instead of 101. Hopefully I am not called out on another tour. If so, I may move to Canada. I hear they are not as crazy about holiday shopping. And I thank the Lord that I was not one of the true victims of the holiday shopping blitzkreg again this year. You know, those poor souls they call cashiers, stockers and retail store managers.