Last Saturday I stood in the blazing heat of a gorgeous summer day. I was utterly slack-jawed in amazement as I chatted-up yet another Garage Sale Customer.
Surrounding us were three young children, ranging in age between 5 and 8. Friends were assisting the hosts of this sale, and their kids brought along some of their unwanted items.
Each diminutive salesman was holding up a distressed toy or trinket they hoped to peddle for a few cents. My ‘Customer’ a diminutive and grizzled woman, probably in her late forties, was carefully examining a small item she had plucked from the youngster. She squinted, and slowly turned the item over in her hands, while the kids jumped up and down hopefully.
“Pleeeeease” the smallest boy cried..
“Pleeeease buy my yellow truck, he’s perfect and he’s only one dollar!”
The woman locked eyes with me, ignoring the boy’s pleas (for I was the Czar of this bizarre marketplace) and with a dead-straight face, clearly said..
“I think…uhm...free, no?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I hissed, close enough for her to smell the freezie I’d just inhaled.
“These little kids are trying to sell you their old toys for next to nothing. Can you at least pretend that you know they might be a bit disappointed with your oh-so-generous offer?”
We were toe-to-toe now, and she wasn’t backing down on her wacky bargaining stance. She looked at the item again, and paused, acting as if perhaps I didn’t hear her the first time, and repeated..
“free I think, yes? free?”
She said with the same dead-pan inflection.
“Beat it.”
I snarled.
This seemed to puzzle her, so I tried to make things as clear as I could, by speaking slower, and directly into her ear.
“Get your cheap-ass back in your shit-box minivan, and haul-ass back to wherever the hell you came from.”
This, she seemed to understand. She shrugged, casually dropped the toy in the basket on the grass, and left me with the disappointed kiddies. My nails digging into my palms.
Two minutes later I paid a total stranger to buy that kid’s yellow truck for 2 lousy bucks. The kid practically shat himself he was so happy. And that was just about the time I decided I was overdue for my first Miller Light.
*******************************************************************************
All this started with a small dream.
It wasn’t a crazy dream, nor was it a particularly lofty dream. It’s not like our friend Nicci was looking to take her three girls to Disneyland, or on a world cruise.
Nicci just wanted to park her car in the damn garage.
Hers was a unique storage problem, that stemmed from the fact that just about everything she wasn’t using on a regular basis, ended up in the garage. Now generally this isn’t an uncommon approach to eliminating in-home clutter, except that in Nicci’s case the sheer volume of stuff was truly awe inspiring.
Picture all of life’s clutter in one large box – toys, clothes, books, lamps, home furnishings, electronics, photo’s, and just about every item that was ever on sale at Umbra. Now imagine placing the contents of that box in a giant blender, and then pouring that mixture back into the garage. That’s where this story begins, and that is where Nicci and I started our preparations for the Greatest Garage Sale Ever.
Fucking crazy people show up at garage sales 8:00 sharp.
The truly insane, socially stunted lepers of society show up at 7:00.
“I think, maybe 20 cents.”
The woman with the hair on the end of her nose said.
They all start their sentences with “I think” like this is all some sort of sambuka-fueled game of arbitrary pricing.
“C’mon, be reasonable. It says $2, how about a buck?”
I repeated the mantra in my head ..Nicci must park her car inside…Nicci will park her car inside…
“I think, maybe…10 cents.”
I sighed. So this was the way it was going to be.
After five minutes of back and forth, I actually convinced her to swing the bidding in the general direction of the asking price, and we settled on a dollar. If this was my regular gig, rough calculations had me earning about $1700 a year.
And on and on it went. Where do these crackpots come from? Are there perhaps secret societies that get together in basements, surrounded by mountains of others people crap? Do they huddle together in the darkness swapping personal stories of triumph?
“Oh you should have seen the fool trying to sell me a $20 picture frame for two bucks! I showed that arrogant bastard!”
They would all have 300 packs of Sugar-Twin jammed in their shitty second-hand purses, and about 200 bucks in nickels and dimes. The former swiped from the local restaurants (as they sipped their tea for 4 hours) and the latter in case the hotline rang with word of another garage sale. …
“Helga! Mabel! Edna! It’s a Moving sale!! Quick get the Voyageur!”
Holy shit there was no end to the cheapness. One piece of work bought a shower caddy, left, came back, and said it didn’t fit in her bathroom. She first asked for her dollar back.
Yes, we are talking about a dollar here.
Her crappy smoke-blowing Hyundai was actually idling away more than a dollar, while she confronted me with her counter-offer. She had hoped to trade the ill-fitting item, for something else.
I gave her two choices:
1) sell it to someone else
2) move to a house with a bigger bathroom
Neither of these reasonable options seemed to resonate with this piece-of-work. While she sadly stared at the shower caddy, her two street-urchins were scooping up armfuls of kids videotapes, and hopefully presented them to mom.
She looked at each of the tapes, all Disney, all ridiculously priced at a buck apiece, and again held up the caddy, and said.. “trade?”
“Please leave.” I begged.
I felt like crying, and I was fighting the urge to force the chrome shower caddy up into her rectum.
She trudged down the driveway, likely wondering how she could possibly make that shower caddy fit into her complicated life. A blue plume of smoke hung in the air as her Hyundai edged up the street, on to the next garage-sale-apalooza.
The kids were really pouring it on by now. They had a lemonade stand set up, and after drinking most of their wares in the noonday sun, were looking to increase their profit margin. Nicci had just the ticket – Jumbo sized Freezies.
They started out at fifty cents apiece, but my son Zachary soon realized that the weather could be an ally. He promptly announced the prices were going up to a dollar “cuz its way hot out mister”.
While the kids gobbled up their own inventory, and while Nicci’s friends gave money to their kids so they could pocket the coins, Nicci and I worked the asphalt. And man, we worked it.
“how much?” obese woman asked.
“that’s three bucks” I said cheerfully.
“I think….25 cents” she smiled right back.
“I think not. I’ll take 2 bucks though” I volleyed.
“No, I think not” she snorted.
And then something magical happened. Something I would never have expected. It made my heart soar, and kept me going for pretty well the rest of the day.
Obese woman dropped her leopard print prescription glasses as she was moving onto the next bargain. As if acting completely by reflex alone, my next set of motions took less than three seconds.
As soon as her glasses hit the basket under the table, I picked up a tea towel, and dropped it on top. I then quickly shoved the basket way under the table.
I smiled sweetly as I agreed to accept a dime for a piece of stemware we had priced at a dollar.
*******************************************************************************
Nicci sold almost all of what she had hoped to unload, and in the end netted a respectable sum. She is well on her way to getting that brand new garage door opener, and is resisting the urge to place anything new into her newly vacated garage space.
We have both agreed that we do not need to (ever) associate with this unique form of humanity again, so this would indeed be our last garage sale.
I do however, take some perverse pleasure in telling you that the obese woman’s leopard-print glasses sold for five bucks.
Surrounding us were three young children, ranging in age between 5 and 8. Friends were assisting the hosts of this sale, and their kids brought along some of their unwanted items.
Each diminutive salesman was holding up a distressed toy or trinket they hoped to peddle for a few cents. My ‘Customer’ a diminutive and grizzled woman, probably in her late forties, was carefully examining a small item she had plucked from the youngster. She squinted, and slowly turned the item over in her hands, while the kids jumped up and down hopefully.
“Pleeeeease” the smallest boy cried..
“Pleeeease buy my yellow truck, he’s perfect and he’s only one dollar!”
The woman locked eyes with me, ignoring the boy’s pleas (for I was the Czar of this bizarre marketplace) and with a dead-straight face, clearly said..
“I think…uhm...free, no?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I hissed, close enough for her to smell the freezie I’d just inhaled.
“These little kids are trying to sell you their old toys for next to nothing. Can you at least pretend that you know they might be a bit disappointed with your oh-so-generous offer?”
We were toe-to-toe now, and she wasn’t backing down on her wacky bargaining stance. She looked at the item again, and paused, acting as if perhaps I didn’t hear her the first time, and repeated..
“free I think, yes? free?”
She said with the same dead-pan inflection.
“Beat it.”
I snarled.
This seemed to puzzle her, so I tried to make things as clear as I could, by speaking slower, and directly into her ear.
“Get your cheap-ass back in your shit-box minivan, and haul-ass back to wherever the hell you came from.”
This, she seemed to understand. She shrugged, casually dropped the toy in the basket on the grass, and left me with the disappointed kiddies. My nails digging into my palms.
Two minutes later I paid a total stranger to buy that kid’s yellow truck for 2 lousy bucks. The kid practically shat himself he was so happy. And that was just about the time I decided I was overdue for my first Miller Light.
*******************************************************************************
All this started with a small dream.
It wasn’t a crazy dream, nor was it a particularly lofty dream. It’s not like our friend Nicci was looking to take her three girls to Disneyland, or on a world cruise.
Nicci just wanted to park her car in the damn garage.
Hers was a unique storage problem, that stemmed from the fact that just about everything she wasn’t using on a regular basis, ended up in the garage. Now generally this isn’t an uncommon approach to eliminating in-home clutter, except that in Nicci’s case the sheer volume of stuff was truly awe inspiring.
Picture all of life’s clutter in one large box – toys, clothes, books, lamps, home furnishings, electronics, photo’s, and just about every item that was ever on sale at Umbra. Now imagine placing the contents of that box in a giant blender, and then pouring that mixture back into the garage. That’s where this story begins, and that is where Nicci and I started our preparations for the Greatest Garage Sale Ever.
I won’t bore you with the details of all the work that went into organizing and pricing the gazillion items Nicci had to sell. Suffice to say that it took a long time. Nicci stubbed and bloodied her toes often as we tried to snake our way through the crazy maze of boxes and lighting. I did however find myself wondering how one person could amass so many lamps, and not actually work in a lighting store.
The pricing system was pretty simple – we stuck to the original premise of The Dream - get the crap outta the garage, so Nicci could park her car. Sell it cheap, and it’ll move.
Eventually as we sifted through the mountains of stuff (and the crap I hauled over form my home) it son appeared as if we may actually make a few bucks in the process. Somewhere between Kitchenware and Electronics, The Dream was eventually modified to include provisions for a garage door opener, and dinner at the local Chinese all-you-can eat place. We were still shooting pretty low in the expectations department.
When you work this hard at something, you expect there to be throngs of people waiting at the end of the driveway, in anticipation of the awesome savings. We had some pretty imaginative and snappy advertising lining all the adjacent streets, and Nicci even took out an add in the local paper. It was so big, she had made arrangements to also use the neighbours driveway. We were out at 6:00 AM setting up, and we were rushing to be able to have it all set up by the time the sale began - at 8:00 sharp.
Despite our fool proof formula, we both felt like kids throwing our first party – would anybody come? We’d feel like such losers if nobody showed. We needn’t have worried.
The pricing system was pretty simple – we stuck to the original premise of The Dream - get the crap outta the garage, so Nicci could park her car. Sell it cheap, and it’ll move.
Eventually as we sifted through the mountains of stuff (and the crap I hauled over form my home) it son appeared as if we may actually make a few bucks in the process. Somewhere between Kitchenware and Electronics, The Dream was eventually modified to include provisions for a garage door opener, and dinner at the local Chinese all-you-can eat place. We were still shooting pretty low in the expectations department.
When you work this hard at something, you expect there to be throngs of people waiting at the end of the driveway, in anticipation of the awesome savings. We had some pretty imaginative and snappy advertising lining all the adjacent streets, and Nicci even took out an add in the local paper. It was so big, she had made arrangements to also use the neighbours driveway. We were out at 6:00 AM setting up, and we were rushing to be able to have it all set up by the time the sale began - at 8:00 sharp.
Despite our fool proof formula, we both felt like kids throwing our first party – would anybody come? We’d feel like such losers if nobody showed. We needn’t have worried.
Fucking crazy people show up at garage sales 8:00 sharp.
The truly insane, socially stunted lepers of society show up at 7:00.
“I think, maybe 20 cents.”
The woman with the hair on the end of her nose said.
They all start their sentences with “I think” like this is all some sort of sambuka-fueled game of arbitrary pricing.
“C’mon, be reasonable. It says $2, how about a buck?”
I repeated the mantra in my head ..Nicci must park her car inside…Nicci will park her car inside…
“I think, maybe…10 cents.”
I sighed. So this was the way it was going to be.
After five minutes of back and forth, I actually convinced her to swing the bidding in the general direction of the asking price, and we settled on a dollar. If this was my regular gig, rough calculations had me earning about $1700 a year.
And on and on it went. Where do these crackpots come from? Are there perhaps secret societies that get together in basements, surrounded by mountains of others people crap? Do they huddle together in the darkness swapping personal stories of triumph?
“Oh you should have seen the fool trying to sell me a $20 picture frame for two bucks! I showed that arrogant bastard!”
They would all have 300 packs of Sugar-Twin jammed in their shitty second-hand purses, and about 200 bucks in nickels and dimes. The former swiped from the local restaurants (as they sipped their tea for 4 hours) and the latter in case the hotline rang with word of another garage sale. …
“Helga! Mabel! Edna! It’s a Moving sale!! Quick get the Voyageur!”
Holy shit there was no end to the cheapness. One piece of work bought a shower caddy, left, came back, and said it didn’t fit in her bathroom. She first asked for her dollar back.
Yes, we are talking about a dollar here.
Her crappy smoke-blowing Hyundai was actually idling away more than a dollar, while she confronted me with her counter-offer. She had hoped to trade the ill-fitting item, for something else.
I gave her two choices:
1) sell it to someone else
2) move to a house with a bigger bathroom
Neither of these reasonable options seemed to resonate with this piece-of-work. While she sadly stared at the shower caddy, her two street-urchins were scooping up armfuls of kids videotapes, and hopefully presented them to mom.
She looked at each of the tapes, all Disney, all ridiculously priced at a buck apiece, and again held up the caddy, and said.. “trade?”
“Please leave.” I begged.
I felt like crying, and I was fighting the urge to force the chrome shower caddy up into her rectum.
She trudged down the driveway, likely wondering how she could possibly make that shower caddy fit into her complicated life. A blue plume of smoke hung in the air as her Hyundai edged up the street, on to the next garage-sale-apalooza.
The kids were really pouring it on by now. They had a lemonade stand set up, and after drinking most of their wares in the noonday sun, were looking to increase their profit margin. Nicci had just the ticket – Jumbo sized Freezies.
They started out at fifty cents apiece, but my son Zachary soon realized that the weather could be an ally. He promptly announced the prices were going up to a dollar “cuz its way hot out mister”.
While the kids gobbled up their own inventory, and while Nicci’s friends gave money to their kids so they could pocket the coins, Nicci and I worked the asphalt. And man, we worked it.“how much?” obese woman asked.
“that’s three bucks” I said cheerfully.
“I think….25 cents” she smiled right back.
“I think not. I’ll take 2 bucks though” I volleyed.
“No, I think not” she snorted.
And then something magical happened. Something I would never have expected. It made my heart soar, and kept me going for pretty well the rest of the day.
Obese woman dropped her leopard print prescription glasses as she was moving onto the next bargain. As if acting completely by reflex alone, my next set of motions took less than three seconds.
As soon as her glasses hit the basket under the table, I picked up a tea towel, and dropped it on top. I then quickly shoved the basket way under the table.
I smiled sweetly as I agreed to accept a dime for a piece of stemware we had priced at a dollar.
*******************************************************************************
Nicci sold almost all of what she had hoped to unload, and in the end netted a respectable sum. She is well on her way to getting that brand new garage door opener, and is resisting the urge to place anything new into her newly vacated garage space.
We have both agreed that we do not need to (ever) associate with this unique form of humanity again, so this would indeed be our last garage sale.
I do however, take some perverse pleasure in telling you that the obese woman’s leopard-print glasses sold for five bucks.
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