Our Family Garage Sale!

This blog was originally posted on my other blog page - http://r-sharma.sulekha.com/blog/posts.htm

Our Family Garage Sale

Having a family garage sale on a Saturday morning in America is as American as having turkey on Thanksgiving day! Garage sales basically have one noble purpose, one that is anchored on a very wise principle….one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. The ‘man’ is mostly over-shadowed by his woman’s junk and children’s trash. Hunks usually possess very little junk, except around the waistline. They are generally not keen on discarding that at any cost!

Americans spend half the year buying and accumulating junk. The other half is spent holding garage sales hoping to palm off their booty for a few paltry dollars or mere pennies in most cases. You may find at least one good deal in any of these sales.

Typically, they are held in the family’s garage or on the driveway in front of it. The family goes through quite a bit of pain when planning such a sale and getting ready for Saturday morning’s bargain hunters. Early bird bargain hunters typically come in BMWs, Porches, Mercedes and a few other fancy vehicles. They are picky and smart shoppers ready to grab good deals. They do not mind going through the trouble of huffing and puffing while loading their vehicles with their loot to the brim.

That being the case, it is hard to avoid all those home-made garage sale signs on street sides starting Friday morning itself. If you drive around a typical neighborhood, you will run into at least ten garage sale signs for every mile. They come in all shapes and sizes with arrows pointing every which way. There are large boards prepared professionally with permanent markers, which will not erase come rain or shine. There are smaller cheaper boards and many frayed posters nailed, glued, and duct-taped to anything standing vertical on street corners.

We as a family had resisted the urge to sell for many years. It was the daunting task of getting the merchandise presentable that had kept us from participating in this noble cause. Besides, it was always easy to simply donate and forget. We never kept those tax deductible receipts safe enough to claim, so we would truly donate and forget. It was the easy way out.

A few years ago, our neighborhood home-owners association planned to have a community garage sale. My son was about 8 or 9 at that time. He was starting to get curious about this whole garage sale tradition. After we explained the idea to him, he just could not get over the notion that he could actually sell his old, tired, worn-out, dirty and stinky toys, clothes and books for a profit. He started making master plans for spending that money. The more he thought about it, the more concrete his resolve became.

We were finally going to have our first family garage sale!

Kid assured me that he would organize the whole event. Apparently, he had been eyeing many garage sales and he knew exactly what to do. In a matter of minutes, he had piled up a mountain of clothes, toys, CDs and books inside the garage. One look in his room confirmed my worst fears. Yes my son’s greed to make a quick buck had compelled him to empty his cabinets and drawers. He had piled up the bad, the ugly AND the good stuff all for sale! His conjecture was that Papa and Mama would duly replenish his coffers with new things anyway.

So, it was time for some serious market negotiations with greedy kid. After quite a bit of tugging, pulling and cut-throat bargaining, we settled on the ones that really needed to leave our premises and proceed to someone else’s treasured collection. You should have seen the sheer enthusiasm that followed after final deal was closed. Kid emptied many cardboard boxes and started sorting his wares. The good, bad and ugly were stacked up. He quickly started marking the prices on hand-torn paper. He duct taped them (permanently in some cases) directly on to the shirts, pants, CDs and books. Somehow, none of them were priced below a dollar. If you have lived in America even for a week, you would have learned the sheer power of “99” cents. I do not know what it is about human mental calculators. They somehow consider items marked one dollar as ‘too expensive’. But reduce it by just one cent and you will find professors of mathematics lining up to buy your junk!

Being keenly aware of that cunning idea, I quickly convinced him to mark down most of them to 99 cents. Soon, it was Saturday early morning and neighbors in our community started arranging their items outside their homes. The sky seemed overcast. But the gloom was quickly chased away by the roar of fancy cars revving up our streets as drivers gawked from within their vehicles. Drive-by window shopping was in full force. We had pulled all our boxes outside the garage walls for an open display. The pride on my son’s face would have rivaled that of the most snobbish, egoistic spinach vendor on the streets of Bangalore! He was not going to fall for bargain hunters or penny-pinchers. He had his mouth set for a brand new Nintendo game with his profits and he was one serious merchant that day.

Cars started driving slowly in a never-ending long parade around our cul-de-sac. Stern drivers were eye-balling the items that were displayed by the proud dealers on their concrete driveways. They never got down from their vehicles. My son’s prized possession was his infant car seat priced at 60 dollars! That did seem a bit high, but we wanted to wait for that lone unsuspecting angelic buyer to show up with the money for our highly stained and salivated upon car seat. But no one attempted to stop!

The cars did not seem to have proper functioning brakes! For all those fancy names, why do car manufacturers provide such inefficient braking systems? When they did apply brakes in front of our driveway, the cars almost always came to a complete halt in front of our neighbors’ homes, which appeared to have fancier stuff displayed. It was getting frustrating and tense for my little peddler. Typically garage sales start cooling off by 12 noon. Not one scratched CD had been sold from our garage! Our fidgety peddler started polishing and burnishing his worn-out stacks. After 5 long hours, the frequency of cars had trickled down to a mere 5 per hour. We got the scent. Our ‘treasures’ were a tad over-used, not to mention, over-priced. Our merchant was unwilling to buckle down to market forces and we did not have to heart to burst his bubble. It started to rain and we quickly moved our boxes into the garage. Kid was hesitant to close his shop, i.e., press button to close garage door. We went back inside our home while he still stood there contemplating on what went wrong in his well-planned strategy. It was all over….or so we thought.

Suddenly from inside the kitchen, I heard footsteps. They were soft but distinct! They were approaching our driveway! Yes, they were growing louder by the second. My kid came scampering into kitchen at 20 miles per hour with a 10 decibel announcement….’THEY ARE HERE MOM, THEY ARE HERE!!”

Wow, finally, some buyers! With big smiles, both hubby and I ran out to the garage and walked around our parked van to see who it was. There in front of the garage on the wet driveway were three tiny kids and a cat! They were none other than our neighbor’s children from two driveways down the same street.

This photo was taken by yours truly in sheer joy! It has been slightly darkened to conceal identity! Cat is visible behind the smaller boy’s legs.

Two scrawny brothers, their baby sister and their well-fed family cat had come to check out our wares! They too had participated in the garage sale, but their faces told a different story….one of failure. Apparently, they were not able to sell anything and so their daddy had come up with a brilliant idea.

He decided to twist the garage sale motto a bit…’one peddler’s unsold junk is another peddler’s treasure! In other words barter!

Dictionary defines barter as to bargain away unwisely or dishonorably; bartering away his pride for material gain.

Seemed perfect! As soon as the life-saving deal from neighbor was explained to our kid, he jumped with glee and ran to the neighbor’s garage. Their three kids in our garage and our kid in their garage quickly exchanged and switched CDs, toys and other games in a matter of seconds! No money exchanged hands. My peddler had discarded his recently acquired profession by the curbside in a jiffy!

All the kids went back happily to their respective homes with boxes full of everything they had never dreamt of ever owning! Since our kid was nowhere in sight, I went back to the garage for a quick survey of items left behind. There was that very same mountain of clothes…now strewn all over the oily garage floor…not one had left our premises. The melee by the three kids and their cat had only resulted in our leftover items getting filthier than before. It was now my job to pick up the pieces and store them away for donating or simply dumping based on the degree of damage!

That was the first and last garage sale ever. These days, we are just happily collecting junk without ever discarding them. A day will come when there will be no more room for human habitation. That is when I shall have my first garage auction!

Any takers?

Copyright © 2007 Ranjini Sharma All Rights Reserved