Early in my reporting career, I covered a car wreck that shut down traffic completely in the southbound lane of Interstate 39 west of Portage. I worked as the primary writer on the deadly pileup, and my intrepid colleague Jen McCoy shot the scene. As we stood in the median talking to a state trooper, tires screamed, followed by a jarring crash, as a northbound gawker slammed headlong into a stopped car in front of him not 30 feet from us.

Several pieces of debris rained down around us or whizzed overhead, but, thankfully, none of us were hurt.

Another time, as I approached the scene of a standoff between police and an armed man, I called out to an assault rifle-toting officer who appeared to be standing alongside his car. He responded by spinning on me, gesturing at a nearby building, and yelling, “Get behind something! Do you want to get shot? There’s a guy with a gun in that window!”

On yet another occasion, as I tried to get a look at a potentially toxic chemical plant fire in an unfamiliar town, I drove around an unmanned barricade and entered the evacuation zone. I knew the winds had changed, blowing the (what turned out to be nontoxic) smoke and fumes away from the hill that gave me a bird’s eye view of the scene.

Truth be told, the dangerous places I sometimes end up are among my favorite parts of the job. But in none of the above-mentioned scenarios was I ever half as uncomfortable, or even fearful, as I was during my assignment on Friday, when the call of duty took me into West Towne Mall during the Black Friday shopping rush.

Personally, I take no pleasure from the act of shopping. It’s a chore that needs to be done on occasion, and as such, I tend to be pointed and efficient with my forays into America’s temples of consumerism. I go in with a fairly specific idea what it is I need and how much I’m willing to shell out for it, and I spend little to no time “browsing.”

But even with my finely-honed sense of professional empathy, I cannot for the life of me imagine what could possess a human being to wake up hours before sunrise, huddle in lines amid the frosty, scarf-clad masses and then rush headlong into a feeding frenzy of culture-driven consumption.

Let’s face it — people have been trampled and even killed in shopping stampedes. One shopper told me Friday it was common for tussles to break out over premium commodities at bargain prices. She described in great detail how, earlier that morning, she and another woman had locked eyes as they homed in on the last of a particular sweater, then broke into dead sprints to get it first. My shopper told me if they had both gotten to the garment at the same time, she was prepared to throw elbows to get it.

With a choice between thousands of people like that or a police standoff, I’ll take the flying bullets any day.

Not to be dissuaded from getting to the bottom of a story, I subtly prodded the Black Friday shoppers I encountered as to what drove them out of their beds to spend eight hours or more filling their cars’ trunks and emptying their wallets. For some, the thrill of the hunt drives them to these irrational behaviors. Others swear the caffeine-fueled stress and exertion are worth it in terms of the money they save.

Several even explained Black Friday to me as a bonding experience to be savored as a family!

This last was perhaps the most disconcerting to me, especially as someone coming off an enjoyable family bonding experience of my own. I spent Thanksgiving Day with both my parents, both my sisters, all my living grandparents and a cousin. After a turbulent year that just keeps getting more interesting, it was a relief simply to be together with the people I love.

That we were able to eat, drink and make a respectable degree of merriment was as spectacular to me as it was special. I couldn’t have been more content than I was as we laid about the living room after dinner, soaking in the warmth from the fire place and catching up on what felt like a year’s lost conversations.

If someone’s able to replicate that kind of feeling as they grapple for goods in the midst of pandemonium, more power to them. But for me, a bonding experience is cheapened significantly when it can’t occur in the absence of cash or a line of credit.

In some eyes, this might make me a bad American. Indeed, economic analysts and industry leaders are already whinging that, while 23 million more Americans spent money in stores or online over the four-day weekend, average spending fell by 30 bucks.

Apparently, the fact that consumer spending on Black Friday was still 0.5% higher than last year isn’t good enough for these people. After all, it jumped 3% in 2008 and 8.3% in 2007! Don’t we realize that we’re in a recession, and it’s up to us to spend ourselves into oblivion so retailers can continue to meet their inflated projections?

Maybe my priorities are out of whack, but I’d just as soon cut back on my holiday spending so I don’t have to carry a balance on my credit card and can continue doubling or tripling my student loan payments. And if more people are beginning to think like me as a result of this recession, then maybe we’re all better off in the long run.