Friday morning 3am wake-up call? Been there, done that (Black Friday 2009, actually. I had to look it up). So I see no need to add Thursday 8pm to my list. By 8pm on Thursday night, my family and I were firmly ensconced in the couches in front of the TV watching Punkin Chunkin and checking on football scores during the ads.

And, after spending half of Tuesday, most of Wednesday, and half of Thursday helping my 12-year-old son redo his room (yes, we’re making the transition from kid room to teen hangout. [Shudder]), I had no interest in seeing the early side of even 9am on Friday.

I paged through the Black Friday deals Thursday night – on my iPad, using Flipp, a cool circular app that might actually work. Nothing grabbed me. We were vaguely tempted by Target or Apple Store gift cards on iPhone purchases — our daughter is getting her first phone for Christmas, an iPhone 5C. But she won’t get to buy that until after school lets out for winter break. So even those gift cards weren’t enough to stir our interest.

In the end, we skipped all the doorbusters. We left at around 9:45am, without a specific list, except for a few video games that the kids wanted. We browsed, partially with the intent to get the kids to tell us what they wanted for Christmas, and partially with the intent to see if there was anything must have out there on Black Friday.

We went to our closest mall, Park Meadows, and parked outside of Nordstrom. The parking lot was only half-full. The lot in front of Macy’s wasn’t much better. I actually started to worry a little bit about the season based on those parking lots, because usually the mall lacks only police to direct traffic — the place is more often like a roach motel during holiday shopping: you can get in, but you can’t get out.

Once we got inside, the mall was only slightly busier than an average day, but absolutely everyone there had at least one shopping bag in hand. Nordstrom had a gift display that I don’t remember them doing before, which ran on either side of the escalators, and it was getting shopped pretty hard. The Apple Store was standing room only. The Lego store was packed to the gills — and had a line at least 10 people deep. Urban Outfitters had an even longer line, and in fact had moved their racks around to force a single line to the registers.

Which leads me to something of a complaint. This wasn’t slam-packed busy, this mall. Heck, there were still parking places to be had. It actually seemed like my family had arrived during a lull between the early morning doorbusters that expired at 9am and the late-morning deals that kicked in around 11am. So why the lines? And if the lines were like this during the lull, what had they been like during the earlier rush? I was confused. Why would retailers spend so much effort to drive traffic to stores and then not do everything possible to capture sales? Urban Outfitter in particular startled me because they’ve been a front runner for mobile POS — where were the iPods? Where was the classic line busting? This is the easiest part of mobile POS’s business case to make — line busting during the holidays. But nope, no mobile devices to be seen.

The biggest loser at Park Meadows, at least from a traffic and bags perspective, seemed to be JCPenney. Their shoe department was mobbed for some reason, but everywhere else was your maybe-slightly-busier-than-usual kind of day. And they appeared to be giving deals away hand over fist. My husband needed a replacement wedding ring (long story), and we had stopped in at a couple jewelry stores in the mall, but wow has gold gotten expensive! At JCP, not only was it cheap (comparable in quality), but the sales associate checked online to see if there was a better price, matched that price, and then gave him an additional 10% off. Apparently just for grins.

That was when we took a break, and bought some cookies. So, at the mall, our purchases consisted of cookies and sodas, a replacement wedding ring, and oh yeah, some soap I was running out of at Sephora.

We headed over to Target in Highlands Ranch and got there around 11:30am. The electronics department employees were reeling on their feet. My son decided that he would get his sister her own (pink) Play Station remote for Christmas, mainly I think so that she would stop using his blue one. So my husband hustled her off to the doll aisle to shop, and I looked around for a red shirt employee to unlock the tab so we could get the remote. It took 5 guys to find the key. I felt very sorry for them — they looked exhausted. But the rest of the store seemed unimpacted by any early morning rush. Pallets of stuff were crammed into the kids’ clothing aisles. But they all had product on them. There were video games for $5-10, and there seemed to be plenty of selection hanging around.

Three cashiers waited to check us out at the front. We ended up picking up a movie, and between the movie and the remote, we apparently hit some threshold for an additional 20% off coupon good only 12/1—12/7 — another case of retailers giving me free money when I hadn’t really been looking for it. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t approach Black Friday like commando force trying to take a beach in enemy territory.

After Target, we wandered down to Gamestop. The kids passed by a pet adoption trailer in front of Petco on the way and while they stopped and petted the dogs, I snuck into Gamestop and bought the two video games that were on the list to begin with (Target didn’t appear to carry the games we were looking for— there wasn’t even a hole for an out of stock). And we were back home in time for lunch (and round three of finishing the redo of my son’s room — there was much building of IKEA furniture this weekend).

All in all, it was good to see people out and happy and shopping. I did a tiny bit for the local economy, but in the end when we went home, I finished up all of my shopping online. I just didn’t see any need to wait in long lines when I could get most of the same deals and some free shipping thrown in. Heck, the presents I purchased for my niece on Amazon were delivered to my brother’s house by Sunday — I got the texts to confirm it.

I don’t know that you can ever really recapture the admittedly sepia-toned memories that I have of Black Friday — of spending quality time with my mom. Of getting up early at 6am to get to the stores by 7am. My family had fun together last Friday, but it wasn’t a trip that my kids will remember over any other trip to a mall. And definitely there were purchases that might have happened that didn’t — because the lines were just too long to bother.

I’ve heard the early results, that sales were up if you compare Thursday/Friday with previous Friday-only results. But I don’t buy that they were up enough to have made the extra labor, store costs, and advertising worth it. And then when I logged into my personal email account on Sunday, which I had not checked since Wednesday afternoon, I had no less than 348 emails regarding Black Friday — and that is specifically excluding Cyber Monday emails.

It just smacks of desperation — of an old-school retail model trying to hang on to an old-school pseudo-holiday. And it won’t die in my lifetime, but every year the results to me are the same: Black Friday is increasingly irrelevant. And even the retailers who try to keep it alive, for some reason beyond me, are making poor staffing decisions that only prove the point. I just don’t get it.