September 10, 2009
“So that you'll never be tempted to participate in a neighborhood garage sale, allow me to explain how they go. Friday night you're up until two in the morning marking prices on all the junk you're hoping people will buy. At this point you're almost psychotically optimistic, calculating the total value of your inventory at slightly over twenty-two thousand dollars . "-- W. Bruce Cameron, author, columnist and humorist.
My neighbors and I are planning our "final" garage sale.
Thus, a definition of the word "final" might be in order here. According to Encarta Encyclopedia, the word means the last of a number or series of similar things. "Final" also means conclusive and allowing no further discussion.
Such as involving a garage sale, the last garage sale, in fact, that my neighbors and I will ever have.
We mean it this time, too.
No one believes us.
We are deadly serious though because the upcoming fall sale will be conclusively the last, positively the last, and without a shadow of a doubt, the last garage sale! There will be no further discussion of this either, we neighbors agree.
But we lie. Here's the proof.
Neighbor, we'll call her Susan, once signed a pledge written by her husband promising to never again hold or participate in a yard or garage sale or any other kind of rummage sale. Another neighbor, let's call her Kathy, announced clearly and adamantly that she was finished, done, spent. No more garage sales for her. The third neighbor, we'll name her Sandy, was too busy and was simply running out of things to sell and, yes, running out of interest, too.
Yet, we are doing it again.
One of the neighbors, not to be mentioned by name, was well ahead of the rest of us. Early on, she began the process of dragging her basement treasures to the garage thus forcing her husband to park outside days ahead of the sale. Her garage was overflowing with clothes racks, tables, and miscellaneous "like-new, priced-to-sell" household items, naturally there was no room for a car. Makes perfect sense to me.
Meanwhile, my husband, who incidentally never fails to notice anything that could possibly be free-of-charge, observed that said neighbor was cleaning out her house and bringing lots of non-worthy garage sale items to the curb for the morning trash pickup.
He began to covet her trash, in particular stacks of empty plastic 5-gallon buckets.
When I called to ask about the buckets, my neighbor's husband answered the phone. "Could hubby have them," I asked him.
"He wouldn't want them, they aren't any good. I drilled holes in them to water flowers," came the reply.
Five minutes later my spousal unit was in their driveway snatching the buckets in the dark of night. He reported back to me that they were perfect for carrying boards, tools, bricks and rocks, and would work just fine.
Of course they would, I thought, and they will work just fine in my garage sale in the spring, too.
That is, of course, if I have a garage sale, you understand.
