I couldn’t even give my shoes away.
I finally held my own garage sale last Saturday. My wife, Barb, was out of town. For several years, she has argued against holding our own garage sale. She said she remembers what happened the last time we held such a sale 30 years ago. She predicted we’d end up investing four hours and have little to show for our trouble.
I was under duress, however. It seems that whenever she is gone for a few weeks, I find things on eBay that I really need that we can’t afford. I buy them anyway. Like a gambler who had overextended himself, I was under the gun this time to come up with $50.50 before my wife came home. So far, my wife has never broken my legs or thumbs for these rash eBay investments, but she has given me “the look,” which can be worse.
I was so desperate that I took one of my greatest eBay purchases, an oak briefcase, to an antique dealer to see how much he would give me for it. I paid $140 and didn’t expect that much but I was hoping for enough to pay off my latest eBay indiscretion, which just happened to be a brand new, never-used-before oak briefcase that I got for just $50.50. I lost all hope when he looked it over, turned to me and said, “Don’t you have anything better than this?” He offered me $20. I will never go back to his store.
So, some of my neighbors down the street were having a garage sale and lots of people were looking over their stuff. I had even spent $1 on a CD that I really needed. Their customers were driving right by my house. I realized I could hijack their garage sale.
Fifteen minutes later, I had filled a single table with some pretty impressive stuff. I had even included a piece of exercise equipment, as is required by state law. It was covered with eBay and garage-sale treasures that I had rounded up over the years. If I had come across a garage sale like this, I would have been stunned. I was going to make a lot of people happy, I thought, and I realized I would easily rake in more than the $50.50 I needed.
For the first 15 minutes no one stopped. I even had some drive-bys. Why would anyone do that? It is just so rude and hurtful. Someone slows down and eyeballs your stuff and decides it’s not worth even stopping their car. It is as if they were saying, “Why would I ever want your soiled belongings in my uppity life?” I felt like a Klingon whose honor had been insulted.
Then the crowds started to come. First one, then two, then three people came to look over my treasures. A man expressed an interest in the shoes I had put out. I told him they were free, but he seemed to feel that was too much. I thought about paying him to take them but decided to see if he would blink first. He walked away in his own shoes.
Someone else took an interest in my CDs and bought two of them for $2. But she ignored my Old Century Baseball game, my Egyptian-leather briefcase, my infinity watch, my unique wooden cassette case and a broken umbrella that is huge when it stays up. It was just plain wrong.
So, after 15 minutes I decided the garage sale was over. I’d had enough of that. I took it down. I would show them. Besides, what was I thinking pretending that I didn’t need my Egyptian leather briefcase or my wristwatch that uses tiny mirrors to let me see into infinity?
I told my sad tale to my wife on the phone and confessed my awful eBay indiscretion. She had been away from me for quite a while and was in a really good mood. She was quite understanding and grateful that my slip-up this time only added up to $50.50.
I think the failed garage sale was a fluke. I have since realized there were some obvious crowd-pleasers I did not put out. My giant armadillo slippers I smartly snatched up at a garage sale a few months ago, my CD that features a banjo choir, my wristwatch calendar that still has two good months on it and my shower-cap collection weren’t even made available. I could have made a ton of money.
I’ll bet I could find even better things on eBay to sell at a garage sale. I could pay off my eBay debt that way in a matter of months. It’s funny, sometimes my wife doesn’t trust me to have smart solutions to financial challenges and then I come up with ideas like this. Maybe I could get more people to stop by wearing one of my shower caps and waving.
In 30 years, Barb will forget all about this garage sale and then the man with the shower cap will step out of the shadows with his walker and a briefcase and blow her away by hosting the garage sale to end all garage sales.
Now that’s a future even my wristwatch would not have seen coming.
Steve Eaton lives and works in Logan. He can be reached at Eatonnews@gmail.com