It was about 4:45 in the morning, and a father was standing in line outside the Lawrence Best Buy store with his 19-year-old daughter. Someone asked her if she normally was a morning person. The father laughed heartily.

In between chuckles, the father answered for her.

“She normally rolls out of bed about 11,” said LeRoy Andrews, of Tonganoxie.

Ah, but here’s the thing: We’re talking about shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s a day where normal is thrown out the window.

Andrews’ daughter, a freshman at KU, spent the night sleeping on the sidewalk outside of Best Buy. Not exactly a father’s dream, but as Staci Andrews explained, she had to get there early to have any hope of getting a voucher for one of the discounted laptops she wanted to walk away with.

So she and good old Dad and a couple of friends got to the store at 5:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. The doors to the store would open in a mere 11 and a half hours.

“But we’ll probably end up saving over a thousand dollars total today,” LeRoy Andrews said.

The fun of it

They weren’t alone. The line outside the Best Buy store was larger than the population of many western Kansas communities.

Tony Hubbard, a supervisor at Best Buy, estimated the line to have more than 500 people. It snaked from the door, around the side of the building and looped twice so that it was overflowing into the parking lot of the gasoline station next door. The weather was great for the large crowds. It was about 50 degrees, even at 5 a.m. Hubbard said it was the longest line the store had ever experienced.

Everybody was there, it seemed, for the same reason.

“It is the fun of thinking you are really getting a good deal,” Lisa Pulliam said.

She still remembers the year when she bought 10 DVD players for $19 each.

“That was back when that was a good deal,” Pulliam said. “Everyone we knew that year got a DVD player.”

This year, Pulliam brought her 11-year-old daughter, Kimi Kramer. She walked away with a $35 MP3 player, which was marked down 50 percent. Kramer bought it with her own money, so waiting in line for two hours to save the 35 bucks was worth it. And for no extra cost, she got two hours of bonding time with her mother.

“She was kind of going crazy,” Kramer said of her mother. “She was talking to everyone.”

Gee, Mom, how embarrassing.

Shopping by male

at 4 a.m. friday, customers at Best Buy, who had started lining up Thanksgiving Day, wait to get some Black Friday deals. Hundreds of people had stretched around the west side of the building on a night that was unseasonably warm.

It wasn’t all mothers and daughters though. There were nearly as many men as there were women in several of the lines outside Lawrence retailers.

Thomas Stuart, of Lawrence, was first in line at SuperTarget, which opened its doors at 6 a.m. By 5:30 a.m., Stuart and his wife, Cheryl, had already been to Wal-Mart, Sears and Kohl’s. But their shopping experience began much earlier than that.

“We did our scouting a couple days earlier this week,” Stuart said. “You look for empty spots on the floor, and look for where they’ve pushed the shelves back. That’s where they are going to put the promotional items.”

Stuart said he’s done the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping routine for the last six years, ever since he and his wife have been together.

“It gives you a little bit of bonding time with the wife,” Stuart said.

Moving on down the line, meet Dusty Wilson, of Lawrence. He’s asking anyone who happens to be wearing a red jacket whether they work at SuperTarget. He’s ready to get in the store.

“Every year, whether I like it or not,” Wilson answers when asked how often he participates in this shopping frenzy.

He and his wife, Jennifer, had already been to Wal-Mart. Since Wal-Mart became a Supercenter, the store is open 24-hours a day, seven days a week, including Thanksgiving. So that means the days of waiting outside the giant discounter are over. Instead, customers wait in lines inside the store, waiting for pallets of promotional items to be brought out.

“It went from a free-for-all to organized chaos,” Wilson said.

Wilson said he tries to bring a Y chromosome approach to the day.

“Take no prisoners,” is the advice he gives to those who ask.

His wife, who is standing in line beside him, looks nervous.

Rhonda Jonces, 27, of Perry, Ga., and Robert Souter, 22, from Hiawatha, kept warm around 4 a.m. Friday while customers at Best Buy were lined up from Thanksgiving Day to get in on Black Friday deals.

“We have four kids,” she says in a voice loud enough to perhaps comfort those standing around them. “We’re definitely trying to save money.”

A first-timer

Danielle Dunn, who is visiting Lawrence from Joplin, Mo., has been going to these events since she could drive, which in her case is about five years.

“I think it is fun,” said Dunn, who was standing in line at SuperTarget. “It is a challenge. There are a limited number of items, and it is first-come, first-serve. It is fun to see if you can get what you want.”

Her friend Jill Lucas, also of Joplin, is experiencing it all for the first time.

“I’m just trying to keep calm. I think this one will be a little more fast-paced than JC Penney,” said Lucas, who was at JC Penney at 5 a.m. for what she said was a fairly mild-mannered opening.

About that time, a security guard began walking up and down the line that stretched about half the length of the store. He was reminding people not to run, push or shove.

Dunn tells the first-timer Lucas – who is “so not” a morning person – that she is a good friend for getting up at 4 a.m. to keep her company on the shopping trip.

Lucas responds, though, that she’s now in this game, too. She’ll be doing some buying inside the store.

“I’m not just here for moral support, that’s for sure,” Lucas said.

Nobody else was either.