I Suck At Black Friday

yesterday was the infamous day known as black friday. black friday is supposed to be one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year... but that is not why i consider it a day of infamy. black friday is the day i potentially could have died. thus, i suck at black friday.

for a few years now, my friends (cass and ellen) have been having all of us over on the day after thanksgiving. the premise is simple: everyone brings their leftovers from thanksgiving and then all of us partake in those thanksgiving leftovers. i guess you could say it is sort of like a potluck of thanksgiving leftovers. cass and ellen began the tradition because they generally host thanksgiving at their place for all of cass's and ellen's family. so, in an effort to get rid of the leftovers, they came up with the idea of the black friday dinner.

it was on one of those fateful black friday dinners where my eyes were definitely larger than my stomach. i used to have a nasty habit of devouring food. (who am i kidding... i still do.) needless to say, i met my match when a dish containing strips of steak appeared. thinking nothing of it, i simply placed an entire strip of steak in my mouth. i figured that i could chew the steak apart with my molars of steel. unfortunately, the steak proved to be a little more resilient. the steak would not break apart in my mouth.

i don't remember what caused my attempt to swallow the piece of steak. i actually think that one of my friends made some sort of joke and i... naturally... giggled. i think when i giggled, the swallowing action was triggered and the piece of steak attempted to go down my throat. that was not good, considering the strip of steak had not been broken down in the slightest.

so unfortunately, i started to choke. when i realized that the piece of steak was lodged in my throat, i calmly tapped karen on the shoulder so as to not make a scene. karen was busy talking about something and initially ignored me. so, i tapped her on the shoulder again. this time, karen realized what was going on and quickly had me get up so that she could perform abdominal thrusts on me. truth be told, i would have perfomed abdominal thrusts on myself had i remembered what the procedure was when doing it to oneself. (as you can tell, like most things... i forgot my cpr training.)

luckily, the piece of steak came out. i actually wanted to take a picture of it as an old keepsake, but karen quickly disposed of the evidence. my friends joked that karen's face turned whiter than mine when i was choking. looking back, i can laugh at the whole incident.

for my friends (garv and leeann), it was probably an interesting night for them. leeann had only dated garv for a brief time during that black friday dinner. so as it was, she barely knew any of us. she had to leave early that night to meet her friends. so when she got up to leave... that was when the choking incident happened. when it turned out that i was okay, she must have thought all of us were crazy because we were all laughing and joking again as though the whole choking thing was commonplace. thankfully, she ended up marrying garv.

anyway, that was awhile ago. yesterday i did not have any life threatening moments. my favorite brother-in-law (pj) and i had lunch together at the 99 restaurant in rockland. (i believe it is considered in rockland. the restaurant is off of 228 on the hingham/norwell/rockwell line.) pj loves the 99, in part because his friend (dee) works there. lunch was good.

afterwards, karen and i went to the black friday dinner. in addition to the usual cast of characters this year (cass, ellen, marc, kelley, karen and i), my friends (meredith and doug, and hugh and jenny with their two children) came to partake in the festivities.

it was nice to meredith again. meredith always seems to be happy, especially now that she is planning her wedding for july 4th of next year. and doug... he's a riot. he's a great guy.

likewise, i have not seen jenny and hugh (or their children) in quite some time. it was good to see them as well.

anyway, there were no choking incidents this year. i made sure to cut up my food into really tiny pieces. as usual, i had a good time seeing everyone again. for this holiday, i probably should hang out with my friends more. it will probably provide a good distraction during the holiday season.