Stampede Like a Boss

Writer Ernest Hemingway famously ran with (and wrote about) the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

Iconically speaking, that is a famous and manly thing to do.

Well, pretty famous anyway.

If you’ve never heard of this, it’s an event that happens during the annual nine-day San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain when the bulls being used in the bullfight that evening are “run” by drovers through the streets and into pens inside the bullring. At some point many years ago locals decided to run along with the bulls, and eventually they took up the more daring challenge of running in front of the bulls. Now they are joined by tourists from all over the world.

I have to admit this whole thing sounds fairly stupid. I see absolutely no sense whatsoever in running down a cobblestone street with hundreds of other drunk men trying to keep ahead of a pack of confused and irritated bulls.

It’s somehow a test of one’s courage to risk a horn in the buttocks. Many have lost their lives in the odd endeavor, and not a few have lost their dignity (there is nothing so humiliating as discovering you will scream like a little girl when faced with real danger). And of course there is that photo on the Internet documenting the double victory of one steer and two rears (of brothers, no less). Chalk one up for the bovines.

That said, there is reportedly a sense of exhilaration and accomplishment that is associated with this unique event – and this I can appreciate, even if I don’t completely understand.

How?

Because there is a more modern phenomenon which gives the same sort of high. And if were Hemingway alive today he would shudder at the mere thought of a stampede far more dangerous than one of simple, snorting, horned beasts. I’m convinced he would probably come up with some manly reason for excusing himself and retiring to the card table with a double scotch if faced with today’s true test of courage:

Running with the after-Thanksgiving shoppers.

The “biggest shopping day of the year” is the official moniker for a crazed stampede to every department store in America the day following “the biggest gobbling day of the year.” Terms like DOORBUSTERS and PRICE BLOWOUT and RACE TO SAVE proliferate newspaper and television advertising in the days leading up to this event.

The other day my son responded to a store ad which excitedly informed viewers that doors would be open on Friday at 4 a.m. by saying primly, “Well, that’s a bit excessive, don’t you think?”

I could tell he didn’t get it.

He, like my husband, is not a shopper. They are the “seek and destroy” type of customer, venturing out to buy something only when absolutely necessary such as when holes in worn out socks and underwear demand replacement or the females in their lives require gifts.

They cannot imagine deliberately joining such frenzied bargain-hunting masses – the pushing, the shoving, the grabbing, the GREAT DEALS.

What’s not to like?

The exhaustion, the debt, the rampant consumerism.

What a rush!

Now, this is a true test of courage – one which is not meant for the faint of heart – and one which is not easily understood by the uninitiated.

Hmmm.

When put that way, I suppose there are some similarities between the two stampedes: both are exciting only to those who participate; both are confusing to those who don’t; both are anticipated as an annual ritual.

And both involve a lot of bull.

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