Sunday, September 30, 2007

More garage sale highlights

Day two was another rousing success! I am proud to say that of the three SUV-loads of boxes I brought to my parents' house for the sale, only one item came back into my house... a really beautiful baby book that I may have overpriced. I was also very proud of my mom who donated lots of stuff to the Rescue Mission instead of keeping it as her "starter stuff" for her next garage sale. We had several funny moments on day 2...
- Two neighborhood boys, middle school aged, visited our sale about five times on Saturday. They were charming and adorable and bought several random items, like three mismatched stemware glasses, an old leather wallet of mine, a free football-shaped mug and 10 cent jewelry for their moms. The really ironic thing was that their families were also having garage sales that day, so as their poor moms were trying to get rid of stuff, these boys were buying more stuff to bring back in (I accused them at one point of buying our stuff and trying to sell it for more at their garage sale... you know, garage sale 'flippers'.) The boys loved talking to my mom and were giving her the rundown of their families and hobbies and the like and engaged in a bit of one-upmanship with each other- I went to this place on vacation, I have this many bikes, etc. until the younger one blurted out with great enthusiasm, "My dad works for the FBI!" and we all cracked up laughing.
- One shopper, a larger-sized lady who appeared to not be in the best of physical or mental health, asked to use our bathroom and said "it's an emergency!". Not wanting to be completely inhuman but a bit concerned about inviting her into my parents' house, I showed her in. She used the facilities and told my mom how beautiful the house was and how this was the second time she had to go to the bathroom this morning. My mom helpfully offered, "Maybe you're coming down with something..." to which she replied, "No... I stunk up your bathroom." You just can't make this stuff up.
- Watching people going through our stuff at the end of the day as we are literally putting the leftovers into boxes to give away was a trip. We told them to just take it for free and it was like Christmas morning. On the first day, people were on their hands and knees going through boxes of old household items like there was money in the bottom of the box. We think that it capitalized on the trademark of the serious garage-sale shopper: the work of the hunt for treasure.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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