I was at my mother-in-law’s house last week and she informed me that her Christmas shopping was done.  I am so depressed.  I have barely begun.

Each year I tell myself to start earlier, to spread out the cost, the stress, and the fatigue of Christmas gifts.  But every year I find myself, again, in the month of December with mile-long lists and no time.

One of my friends said she always waits until the day after Thanksgiving when EVERYBODY is having a sale, and buys just about everything she needs in one day.  I tried that one year.

Apparently, there are millions of others out there who think, like _my friend, that no matter what the mental or physical cost, this is a great idea.

First, you have to wake up before the sun rises so that you can get a parking place, where you then wait or sleep until the mall actually opens.  If you make the foolish  mistake, like I did, of thinking that arriving at 10 a.m. is sufficient, you are relegated to driving in circles around the parking lot, hoping against hope that there might be a spot that by some miracle nobody else found.  And I knew that if there was a woman strong enough to shop the day after Thanksgiving, she wouldn’t be coming back out until well after dark .

I had two options.  I could either (a) park illegally, or (b) hover near the mall entrance and follow people out to their cars.

Parking illegally is risky. On the one hand, you think that surely they won’t tow cars when obviously it was the only place within miles to park.  On the other hand, you don’t want to walk out with ten bags in both hands and one hanging from your mouth just to find your car gone.

I chose to hover.  It’s a dangerous game, this hovering. Sometimes two hoverers spot the same poor sole walking out to her car, and both plan to lay claim to the prized parking spot.  Tempers flare.  You don’t want to tangle with a mad woman whose spot you just took, even if you thought it was yours.

When I was in grad school, we had the same problem … more cars than there were parking spots.  We took the hovering a step further and offered rides to people coming out of the building.

“Can I give you a ride to your car?” I offered.  The first time was the hardest.

“Do I know you?” they’d reply with a quizzical look on their faces.

“No, but I want your parking place.”  They’d always smile.  Most accepted.  But no matter what, they all understood.

But I didn’t think these mall women would appreciate this particular hovering technique. So I kept circling, watching, and waiting, until finally I found a straggler wandering out a side door and was lucky enough to be the only one who saw her.  It was two miles away, but hey, I was in!

I entered the sea of estrogen flowing up and down the mall corridor.  People were bumping into each other, children were crying, and men were going insane.  My nerves were already frazzled.  I made a quick turn into my first target store only to find it was so full of people I could barely turn around.

Women were dashing from rack to rack, grabbing clothes, yelling across the store, and camping in line.  I say “camping” because the lines were so long, the men needed to shave by the time they got to the front.  I needed a nap, had grown several new gray hairs, and knew all my line-neighbors intimately by the time I got there.

After several more stores, I decided that nothing was worth this and I left. I smiled as two cars followed me to my parking place and wondered which one won.

I don’t have the health to try that ever again. It would either put me in the hospital or the mental institution … the only question is which one. And besides, I can’t afford any more gray hair.