The bleary-eyed bleakness of the store rang in my brain. As my head oscillated from shelf to shelf and the squeaky wheels of my shopping cart swiveled from aisle to aisle, the empty display cases gave evidence of the voracious greed that had enveloped the shoppers who had gone before me. The barren shelves reminded me of my own procrastination.

Sure, it was only two days before Christmas when I walked through the automatic sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart at 180th and West Center, at this point I hadn't even given a thought as to what to by everyone for Christmas.

The first thing that rang in my brain was the slightly older, slightly "oversized" gentleman maneuvering the majorly oversized push-mop through the canyons and entryways of the store. The next thing that seemed out of place about this trip was that the typical "greeter" seemed pre-occupied. The person who was always so friendly, the person with the smiley face stickers seemed to have multiple responsibilities at this time of day. Something was wrong.

You see, as a college student I am ok with saying that I frequent the local area Wal-Mart and as a college-student I would consider myself pretty familiar with the typical Wal-Mart landscape and it would seem that on the evening of this particular visit, something had gone majorly askew. However, throwing caution and confusion to the wind I began to proceed with my shopping. I was tired and as any man would, I just wanted to get done with shopping and go home.

Another thing that was noticed about this visit was the definate lack of people. It was this fact that brought the protagonist of this story a little bit of satisfaction. It was this portion of the story that he had counted on. It was just after midnight when I arrived.

I had gone to a few different stores in the days leading up to this night with the intentions of getting all of my shopping done. However as the slightly shy person that I am, I don't like being around that many people at one time, especially if they are in front of me in line to check out. So in my logical but slightly irrational mind, I devised a plan to attack my shopping at a point where I figured there would be the least amount of people. Thank goodness for 24 hour Wal-Marts!

As I meandered the lifeless aisles seemingly nothing stuck out at me with the tag, sticker or advertisment that said "HELLO MATT, I WOULD MAKE A WONDERFUL GIFT FOR YOUR FAMILY MEMBER!" And as the minutes wore on slowly, the shopping slowly wore on me. I picked up a pair of work out pants for myself and exasperated grabbed a movie for my brother, paid and left the store.

It had been nearly an hour. Frustrated and tired I drove home. With only one gift down, I decided that shopping really does suck and would prefer to never do it again.

The moral of the story however is that the least crowded time to shop, especially at Wal-Mart is between the hours of 1 and 4 in the morning.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!!!!!!