It’s been a very tough shopping season for me this year.  After my “accident” the day after Thanksgiving,  My ankle was finally healed up enough to get out and shop.  I’d made promises to all my friends that I would give them better presents this year than I normally would if I could just deliver them a few days late.  That bought me the time I needed to just power through the post-Christmas sales and do what this girl needed to do.

So I put my shopping outfit together, the doctor had cleared me to shop again, and I mapped out my route.  I knew the stores, the target gifts, and the price points.  I parked at the far side of the lot and jogged inside.  In no more than a few minutes I had everything I needed from that store and was out the front door.  And as I stepped into the crosswalk, that’s when I nearly died.  A car blared on its horn and ran right in front of me.  I was so startled that I jumped back and avoided being creamed, but I caught the license place of the offender:  SUPRSHPR.

Suddenly everything made sense.  The push in the store four weeks ago, the near-miss here in the pedestrian crossing — it was my shopping nemesis again!  Instantly I knew what I had to do.  It was payback time for a December-full of crutches and impatient glares from everyone around me.  I quickly abandoned my intentions of getting presents for my friends and family and went into stalker mode while I followed “SUPRSHPR” around the city: from the Galleria to the Valley Woods Mall to the Athaneum to West County Place.  Always I’d arrive just in time to see my target pulling away and getting back on the highway.

So I took an educated guess and headed via my secret shortcut to the last shopping center we hadn’t been to yet.  And I waited.  Sure enough, I saw her headed into the Best Buy and followed.  Once inside, I watched from two rows over as she picked up the very last copy of some game that I didn’t want.  But it didn’t matter.  It was THE LAST COPY IN THE WHOLE STORE.  As she strode confidently to the checkout line, I sidled up to a security guard and whispered that I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, but I’d seen that woman attempt to hide a memory stick in her clothes and might be trying to steal it.  The guard nodded knowlingly, as though to say that they got a lot of that around the holidays, and pulled an astonished SUPRSHPR aside out of the line.  She waved her copy of the game I didn’t want helplessly before the guard made her put it down and escported her to the back of the store.  I picked up the last copy of “Small Game Hunter 2010 — The Critters of Madison County” and stepped into the checkout line, which had miraculously cleared away, and I was able to go directly to a checker.

The last thing I heard as I left the store was an announcement over the PA, “Security with gloves to the interrogation room for customer inspection.”  Honestly, those words gave me the most warm and joyful holiday feelings I’ve had in … well, in four weeks.  Merry Christmas, SUPRSHPR, wherever you are.

I’m not going to bore you with my qualifications — what kind of huge shopping fan I am or how many years in a row I’ve been up early enough to wake the rooster getting those shopping deals that you only dream of.  I’ve bagged every single treasure worth getting before you’ve even finished your first cup of coffee.  But this isn’t a brag-post for Tammy.  That’ll have to wait for another day.

No, this is to explain what happened last Friday while I was out doing what I do third-best in the world.  There I was at Macy’s, at the very front (and yes, of course I mean the very front) of the line to get in at five.  I knew the optimal path through the store, and I had planned out every route and every out-of-stock contingency.  I was prepared physically and mentally.  I had stretched and was wearing my lucky shopping sweats.  And I was ready to push, pull, scratch, and bite whatever and whomever I had to in order to get to the bottom of my holiday shopping list.

So that’s where I was at 4:59 as the manager approached the door to unlock it.  The final seconds ticked away, and I wiped a rare bead of nervous sweat from my perfectly sculpted eyebrow.  Five.  The key is in the lock.  Four.  The key begins turning.  Three.  The key turns over.  Two.  The bolt slides free.  One.  The manager turns and runs for cover while I shift my weight back onto my heels for a running start.  Zero.

I’m through the door like a sneeze through cheap kleenex.  I round the first corner ahead of the pack, and I see a pile of heated blankets with built-in hoodies in my sights.  And that’s when it happens.  I feel a shove in the middle of my back, and I start to lose control.  I waver, then I wobble, then I careen.  I see a big concrete post coming at me, and I think to myself “why push me — there was a whole stack of those things?” right before everything goes black.

When I awoke, it was hours later.  The paramedics had taken me to the hospital as a precaution, and I had missed the entire sale.  Apparently I’d been pushed from behind, stumbled into the column and knocked myself out.

Later, I was sitting at home with my ankle wrapped up and a bandage on my head, and the call came from the department store.  Apparently they looked up the tape from the security camera when my “accident” occurred, but the cameras in just that part of the store had somehow been turned off at just that time and came back on a few minutes later.  And they didn’t have any video of my accident or the perpetrator. They apologized profusely, but I didn’t want to hear it.  I honestly wasn’t interested.

I knew what happened to the security cameras.  I’d been played by someone else — someone even more serious about Black Friday shopping than me.  But I know also that revenge is a dish best served with a side order of smackdown, and that the shopping season has just begun.

Whoever you are out there, you know it’s on like Donkey Kong.