Just like Black Friday

I have never been to the first day of a Tuesday Morning sale until yesterday. Crazy!! I am definitely not the type of person to wake up early to camp out overnight somewhere in the freezing cold to stand in line to buy something. I think I have only done that once in my life and it was during a poor lapse in judgement some time during the 90's when I got up at 4am to stand in line to try and get a Furby. So why did I find myself in a line of about 50 crazy shoppers on Tuesday morning at 7:30 waiting to get into the store? An umbrella. Yep, that's right.... a stupid patio umbrella.

I have been wanting one of those jumbo patio umbrellas (the good kind) to put by the pool for a couple of years now, but I just could not part with the $130 bucks that they all seem to be selling for. A couple of days ago I was looking through the Tuesday Morning flyer when there on the front page was the exact umbrella I had been looking for. The amazing part was that it was only $39 (regular price $134)!!!!! On Monday, I stopped by the store and scoped out the situation to make sure they actually had more than 2 of the umbrellas for sale. You know how that goes. Most of these places only get one of the sale items in just to get you in the store. If you are not familiar with how Tuesday Morning works, they put out their sale items a couple of days before the sale and attach big signs to them saying that if you want to buy that particular item, you will have to come back on Tuesday morning. Surprisingly, they had about 15 of them in stock so I felt pretty sure that I would have a chance at getting my hands on one. I mean, really, how many people would get up early on a Tuesday morning to buy an umbrella.

Apparently a lot of people wanted the damn umbrellas. I got there about 7:30 and the line went around the corner. I had planned on being there around 7am but of course I had to get behind lots of people who obviously had nowhere else to be on a Tuesday morning except driving 20 miles below the speed limit in front of me on a two lane road with no possible way to pass them. Arghhhh! Finally, after getting around the slow driving morons and hitting every possible red light in the universe, I pulled into the packed parking lot and my jaw dropped. Tons of people and a huge line. They finally opened the door and since I knew where the umbrellas were, I had an advantage over the lost and confused people which allowed me to make it to the umbrella table just in time to grab one. We will not discuss the fact that I may or may not have pulled it out of a little girl's hands who was also reaching for it. Her family already had three of them in their basket. Tough luck kid! Yea!!! I have my umbrella! It makes up for standing in line for the damn Furby that I never got.