Folks, Black Friday has arrived.

We’re going to assume you aren’t frantically checking your phone or your calendar to confirm, because if you’re like most shoppers in the United States, you’ve started holiday shopping already. Some of them—an increasing number, we might add—began the journey this summer, with a little something we know as Amazon Prime Day.

Prime Day 2019 has come and gone.

The early returns are, as you’d expect, even bigger and eye-popping than they were a year ago. While the financials aren’t yet official, Amazon said it shattered previous Prime Day records this year; more than 175 million products were sold (via Yahoo! Finance) and sales surpassed Cyber Monday and Black Friday...combined.

Remember when we all went back-to-school shopping?

It was, at best, a bittersweet endeavor. 

On one hand, it basically meant that summer was over. Once the calendar hit August, we groaned as we embarked on the slow march toward the first day of school—which would be briefly interrupted by a little slice of retail euphoria. Get in the car, kids, we’re getting everything you need for the new school year and we’re going to do it in like, four hours. Our parents truly loved us, didn’t they?