If there is any lesson to be learned from our parents and grandparents, it's that we shouldn't trample Wal-Mart greeters to death the day after Thanksgiving.
Black Friday supposedly gets its name from the post-Turkey Day sales spike that moves many businesses into the profit zone. We respectfully disagree. How many minimum wage workers and pregnant women need to get squashed in the name of PlayStation 3 before we realize how utterly stupid it is to shop on Black Friday?
If your snot-nosed little tot doesn't get the useless piece of plastic he wants, is he really going to hate you forever? We've been in those bratty little shoes before; if we didn't get the one toy we really wanted, then we just borrowed it from one of our butt-hole friends who did. In the end it didn't matter because we probably had more fun with their Nintendo 64 than they did.
We also don't understand the allure of lining up outside of Toys "R" Us before dawn to ensure you won't fail as a parent. Hasn't anyone heard of the Internet?
Wal-Mart certainly knows what the Internet is, which is why the company lists all the products it has for sale on its Web site. The best part is you can pre-order them so you can sleep in after you stuff your face full of pumpkin pie.
The Editorial Board suggests that our generation learn from the wake-up-before-dawn-to-shop mistakes of our parents, and pre-order gifts on the Internet. That way no one will get trampled, and your primary parenting flaw will be a lack of planning, not a brittle spine.
