You were not at my yard sale last week. I watched for you, knowing you would want the things I have culled from my life, things that in some cases, I can't remember buying, needing, wanting or ever seeing. So today, I wound up carting the whole mess to a thrift store in need of donations. I am pretty sure I heard one worker snickering as one of his colleagues asked if I needed a receipt for my taxes. Right, mister. A woman in a 9-year-old Hyundai who's snatching one of the T-shirts from her donation as she hands it to you really needs a receipt for her taxes.
I am reminded of yard sales past in this piece:
I envisioned getting up early that Saturday morning, trucking my junk out to the yard and chatting with pleasant people who would scoop up my unwanted treasures and force money on me.
The way it turned out, it was Saturday. I did get up early. And except for a woman who muttered, "Whaddya got?" and dropped cigarette ashes on her chest as she pawed through freshly washed clothes, most of the people who stopped by were pleasant.
But the next time I say I want to have a yard sale, I hope someone binds me, gags me and stuffs me in a closet along with everything I didn't sell, including a perfectly good Bald-Headed Man Halloween disguise.
That's because in only four hours, I learned that many people should never go out in public, hagglers make me very tired -- and that in my case, anyway, one person's trash is often not only not a treasure, it's really and truly trash.
Sold by the yard
Planning a yard sale is fairly easy. Decide what's junk. Clean it. Place an ad, put price tags on stuff that is now not junk but eclectic collectibles and, after you can't sleep because you have to get up early, get up exhausted and drag everything outside.
Actually staging the event, and watching avid yard-salers, is a sociological hoedown, one that makes me want to lock 10 people with $4 each in a room full of used tools, furniture and mismatched dishes -- just to see what wackiness ensues.
At my sale, I had customers who offered $20 bills for 50-cent purchases. Dickerers (my daddy taught me that word. Isn't it great?) who wanted to haggle over $1 vintage platform shoes. A man, obviously a used-furniture dealer, who swooped in, tried to dicker (but I wouldn't), bought chairs and swooped out. People who live down the street and now, sadly, know way too much about my belongings and feel sorry for me.
Don't forget the looky-loos. I, for one, tend to take it personally when folks -- who, face it, are spending Saturday morning looking at other people's crap -- pull up to the curb in their cars, roll down the window, look at my things with a critical eye and drive off laughing.
And for the record, I hate everyone who showed up more than an hour before my sale was set to start and shot me dirty looks when I said, "You're out early today, aren't you?" How would you like it if you had a store in your house and I showed up two hours before opening time -- about the time you dragged your behind out of bed --and banged on your front door, yelling, "Are you almost ready?" as you put your pants on?
Stop, thief!
I was arranging things in the yard when my first time-challenged customer, a sweet-faced, elderly con artist, arrived in a late-model truck.
Granny wanted to dicker over a $3 decorative bowl. I am not ready to deal at 6:45 a.m. -- especially when I haven't finished my cappuccino and the dickerer is driving a vehicle nicer than mine. I agreed to take $2 because she was old and I am unflaggingly polite to a woman who might die on my porch, her head striking the $2 bird cage just before she expires on a moldy "Family Feud" game.
I turned my back for 10 seconds to get my money box, only to return and see the penny-pinchin' pilferer climbing into her truck, bowl in hand. I got my cash, though I felt a little guilty about shouting "HEY! DID YOU FORGET TO PAY ME?" at the top of my lungs as Clara the Klepto tried to make her getaway. Overall, the sale was a stinker. A dud. I've had better luck selling aluminum cans. But at least by the time the last gawkers turned up their noses at my eclectic pile o'junk, I had $103 in my cash box, a few less mounds of clothes in my closet -- and a message for my sticky-fingered pal:
You've got my bowl. I've got your license plate number. And next time, Granny, we're gonna rumble.
Yard sales are kind of weird little cultural by-products, aren't they? Truly studies in human nature. I learned a few years ago to bypass all the hassle and just load the stuff up and take it to Goodwill. I can see doing it once I've retired just for the diversion, though - kicks and giggles, y'know.
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