We went to Target on Sunday to check out the Halloween clearance scene and ended up with a wicked cheap fog machine. That’s going to be sweet next time we have a party. Unfortunately, though, we realized something kind of scary. It is clearly the beginning of holiday shopping season.

Carol pointed out that we need to basically hole up at home until after the holidays…at least on the weekends. And she’s totally right. The people shopping on Sunday were maniacs. Like, eyes glazed, no idea what was going on around them. There were all these nasty grandmothers in the toy aisles snatching stuff that’s not even on sale yet! Or arguing with their poor husbands. Come on ladies, do you really expect your 68 year old husband to know which My Little Pony his grand daughter wants?

But the attitude of so many of the shoppers…seriously, it was bad. Just a lot of nasty looks and impatience. When we finally fled the store and were in the parking lot, we had an excellent final encounter. The lot was fairly crowded, but at that moment, the space on the driver’s side of the car was vacant. It is a pretty typical parking lot arrangement, we were nosed in, and there was a line of cars on the other wide, facing us. There was a little Isuzu Trooper type thing facing the vacant space, and as luck would have it, the passengers were getting into their car just as we were getting into ours. Noah climbed into his seat (on the driver’s side) as I put a couple bags in the trunk and then went to buckle him.

Just about then, the people in the Isuzu, three middle-aged women, kind of short and chunky, were revving up and ready to go and I just had a sense that they wanted to pull through the vacant space next to our car rather than back out (as they would have to if the space was occupied). Of course, they would not be able to pull through until I finished buckling Noah and closed his car door. I figured they would either wait, or back out.

Instead, to my surprise, they started driving. They pulled their car up to about two feet away from Noah’s open car door. Effectively, they were about a third into the parking space, still about two thirds in their soon to be vacated space.

So I had to step backwards to awkwardly close Noah’s door, and then squeeze against my car to allow these schmucks to drive past. I think what pissed me off the most is that they weren’t heated up about it, like honking horns or glaring at me impatiently. Instead, they pulled their bumper to within a couple feet of me, and then went on about chatting in their car. It was one of the more asshole instances of passive aggressive behavior I have seen in a while. I mean, seriously, why couldn’t they just wait in their space until I finished getting Noah in his seat? What they did was both obnoxious and dangerous.

Thankfully we have done a good bit of our holiday shopping already, at least for the kids. If we are lucky, we won’t have to deal with these kinds of jerks too much in the next couple of months. Of course, this contest I heard about could make it really easy to avoid the mall altogether. Hey, maybe if you sign up and win and buy me something awesome. You have to make a video and put it on YouTube, so you better be kick ass.