Hard Sell

I finally cleaned out my storage unit and decluttered my house. Then I had a yard sale because nothing’s more American than spreading a bunch of junk across your front yard and selling what you never needed to someone else who won’t need it either. 

I’ve never had a yard sale before. Boy, was I in for a surprise… apparently there are legions of people who go to yard sales every weekend, and they wake up really early.

You know how they came up with the premise for that t.v. show, The Walking Dead? They went to a yard sale. As soon as people arrived they started coming at me like zombies, if zombies smoked crack. I hadn’t even finished setting everything up when they charged towards me with that hungry look in their eyes. I thought, if I’m gonna die, I don’t want it to be while this is happening… that’s not the reputation I wanna go out with! 

They lie to you about why they need your crap too, which is ridiculous because I just want to get rid of the stuff, I don’t need a story to go along with it. This one guy who wanted my record albums from the 80s, told me he was a collector. Sure you are buddy. If he really was a collector, he would’ve already had all the albums I had. Clearly he was gonna resell them at a higher price. Good luck with that. 

A lot of people do that; buy your crap and try to resell it at a higher price. I say, go ahead, you can do all the extra work involved, it’s not worth my time. I sat down and did the math, which surprised no one more than me, but anyway, when I worked out the numbers, they were probably making around two bucks an hour for all their effort. 

This one lady bought a bunch of my items and surprisingly, I was really nice to her. Maybe it was because she was giving me a lot of money, but still, I didn’t have to go out of my way. Anyhow, a few days later, I received a letter addressed to: Garage Sale Lady. When I opened the envelope, it contained a note card with an apology, a quote from the bible, and ten bucks. Apparently this lady had forgotten she put two items in her purse and didn’t pay me for them, so she mailed the money to me when she realized her error.  

Okay, first of all, what the hell is she doing sending cash in the mail? It could’ve gotten stolen and I never would have received what was owed to me, and second of all, someone quoting the bible is indicative of a person harboring a lot of guilt, sexual repression, and Amway products. Now I’m left wondering if she really forgot she had put the items in her purse or if the guilt she was feeling for stealing them outweighed the benefit of getting away with it. 

If it were me, I’d seriously have to consider those two options. After all, I’m half Italian; we quote from the bible all the time!

ahem…

In spite of all my wholesome efforts, there were some items I just couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. I figured whatever I didn’t sell at the yard sale, I could donate. Well that wasn’t gonna happen because it turns out everyone’s getting rid of their crap right now. 

I have some cool retro luggage from the 70s. The kind they don’t make anymore, not the cheap, throwaway junk you buy nowadays where it falls apart after one flight; this is quality. Well who wants luggage during a pandemic? No one’s going anywhere. 

I went to donate it to a charity organization for foster kids, thinking these kids would probably need a suitcase when being shuffled from house to house, but they had a glut of luggage donations the past few months. Turns out, there aren’t enough foster kids to meet the demands of the luggage donations, which is really disappointing. 

I ended up driving all the way to skid row and unloading it onto a homeless person. I handed it to him and he looked confused, so I said “Why don’t you pack up and get away from all this?” 

I felt really good about it afterwards knowing he would be moving soon with a really nice set of suitcases in tow.