The Chicken Coop that is Christmas Season

Abandoned carts in the middle of aisles. Screaming/wandering toddlers. "Multitasking" (oblivious) shoppers on cell phones clogging up foot traffic. Lines. Lines. More Lines. Overflowing parking lots.

Ah, the chaos of the Christmas season is here. Yesterday, armed with my mom, her minivan, and a credit card, I braved the elements and went Christmas shopping. After a stop at Toys 'R Us and Wal-Mart, I was ready to swear off having children and celebrating Christmas in general. Nowhere in sight were signs of a slowing economy. Store after store, packed to the brim with bargain-hungry shoppers, had me feeling a bit like a chicken in a coop. Not a nice one with a wire mesh cage in a yard, where I'm free to roam. One of those coops that are tiny, stacked, noisy, smelly, and an overall disgrace to the Chicken breed. Where every chicken has the same purpose (laying eggs/snatching up gifts) and nowhere to go but on top of each other.

Chaos, paired with my indecisiveness, is disaster. I end up crawling over others, through aisle after aisle. "What about this?" "Would he/she use it?" "Don't they have one of these already? I swear I saw one the last time I was there..." And so on and so forth. Hence, I turn into my fellow shoppers, the ones I secretly despise for taking up too much room, checking out too many items, or asking the check out attendant too many questions. It's inevitable...one way or another, we all morph into a brainless, noisy chicken in these Saturdays preceding Christmas.