You have to understand how usually I do my Christmas shopping. I sit in front of my computer, a few selected mail-order catalogs scattered about, and blithely pick out gifts. Sometimes, I don't even touch them: I just have them forwarded to the giftee.

And I revel in Schadenfreude the day after Thanksgiving, when I tune in the TV news reports about how crowded the malls were and how quickly the hot toy of the year disappeared off of store shelves.

But this year is different. For one thing, I shopped ahead so efficiently that I'd already filled half of my list with items I'd found at unique boutiques throughout the year. And other gifts I had in mind were unbelievably, cheaper in the real stores than online, even with free shipping.

For instance, there is one particular gift which I could have gotten online but didn't. I can't name the gift, since the giftee is a Daft Musings subscriber, so I will refer to it henceforth as "Harry Potter bandaids." Of course, Harry Potter bandaids were available at Amazon. But similar Harry Potter bandaids were available at almost any good-sized store in San Jose. And though I adore Amazon, returning gifts for a refund is pain there, and I wanted the Harry Potter bandaids I bought to be relatively easy to exchange. Another question was where I could get the best Harry Potter bandaids for the best price, and the answer, sadly enough, was not Amazon.com.

I diligently scoured ads. I could get mediocre Harry Potter bandaids in my price range, but those were limited--for example, they might only have Muggles on them, and what was the point of that? Then I saw the ads in the paper for the day after Thanksgiving. Two stores were selling Harry Potter bandaids for unbelievably low prices--but they didn't specify which Harry Potter bandaids they were. There was no guarantee that the Harry Potter bandaids would be available for more than a few minutes after the 6 am store opening, or that I wouldn't be disappointed when I discovered the bargain bandaids were defective or limited. Toys R Us and Target did specify which Harry Potter bandaids they had, but even in my craziest moments, I'm not about to go to Toys R Us on the day after Thanksgiving.

As an aside, I'm sure you hear the stories of people who get in line at stores at 3 am the day after Thanksgiving. They're true. I've worked in retail and I've seen them. Let me just say I don't want to be competing with those people for a good price on, say, Harry Potter bandaids, especially not at Toys R Us at their opening time of 6 am in the morning.

The other store, Target, also had Harry Potter bandaids on sale. Good name-brand Harry Potter bandaids. They were slighly more expensive than at Toys R Us, but the higher price (which was still a really good deal) meant I would still have a chance to snag one by the time I got to the store. And it didn't hurt that Target didn't open until 7 am, so I had one less hour of expert shoppers to compete with. So when I woke up at 8 am, I roused my husband and my son, stuffed them into my car and headed over to the store.

To our pleasant surprise, the early hour meant we were able to still find a parking spot. We rushed in and headed straight to the band-aids section. I had a moment of horror as I saw cart after cart heading back to the check-out aisles with CD players. Virtually every other cart seemed to have a CD player in it, causing my husband to exclaim "they've got to be giving them away." (Actually, they were selling them for $48, which I guess is a really good price.) On my end, my heart sunk. If CD players were selling like this, what hope would I have for getting Harry Potter bandaids a whole hour after the store had opened?

But my fears were for naught. Harry Potter bandaids were still available. I grabbed the Harry Potter bandaids and was ready to declare victory and go home. But then my husband peeled his eyes open and observed that while we were in a store, we may as well try to get some other shopping done.

It was hard to believe, but I began to understand the appeal of shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. For one thing, we were not only able to snag a bargain, but most of the interesting items were still on the shelves. We actually had a choice of Christmas lights, decorative tins, and wrapping paper. We even got Christmas lights in the form of the fashion statement of Fall/Winter 2001: a U.S. flag. As a bonus, it can do double duty during the Fourth of July. Heck, we can leave the lights up all year and no one will think we're lazy.

Emboldened by our success, we braved the toys section, indubitably the most challenging obstacle course in the entire store. We, used to scouring picked-over shelves and limited mail-order offerings, quickly plucked out choice gifts for all the children on our list.

That's not to say the experience was perfect for everyone. We faced a wall of moms and grandmoms, who had parked themselves near an empty shelf that had once held a desired toy. These shoppers, who had arrived just a little bit too late, had been waiting for up to half an hour for an unseen clerk to return with more toys from the mysterious back room of eternal hope.

Peter and I decamped away from the toys section and determined with a quick walk through the video aisle and a stopover at Sees' Candies (California's superior alternative to Godiva) that our shopping would be done. And by 10 am it was. It was great.