Garage Sale

Remember that post I wrote a few weeks ago about cleaning out your closet and ridding yourself of junk? Well this past weekend..most of my ‘junk’ turned into cash. Yes you heard right…my JUNK turned into CASH. Who would want that junk anyway? Yea, my thoughts exactly. But apparently in this glorious city we live in, there are people that actually read the flyer and attend garage sales, even those that start at 8am on a Saturday morning!

If an alien landed in any garage-sale friendly neighborhood, its jaw (if aliens had jaws), would drop in bafflement.

‘Beam me out of here’ it would beg its mothership, ‘these humans are crazy!’

How else would you explain that staple of American life, the good ol’ garage sale? It’s unexplainable, but earthlings love garage sales. And this weekend I learned to love a garage sale too. I had never participated in one, for starters, never lived in a house that had a garage, but I guess that doesn’t really matter, you could still have a yard sale etc. But most importantly, I never, in a million years, thought another normal human being would want to buy my used, old junk. Now, I am not saying that I am unaware of those that are less fortunate, I do come from a third world country that suffers from poverty.

But still, I guess its just hard to get my brain around the concept…as an outsider looking in, like the little baffled alien, how do you explain the concept: We, as human beings, acquire so many possessions that we must periodically devote substantial amounts of time and energy to getting rid of them? I am sure, the little green alien-man is thinking, ‘why don’t the earth creatures simply acquire less in the first place?!’ Easier said than done, huh, my fellow earthlings?

We have this need to purchase everything we want because at that moment in time we NEED it and our lives would not be the same without it. Clearly those space creatures do not understand our acquisitive ways. And clearly I do not understand the acquisitive ways of other human beings. More specifically those that purchased my junk this past weekend. And when I say junk, I mean a zip lock bag filled with mismatched earrings, broken watches, rusted bangles, peace sign earrings… at $5 for the whole bag, the poor old lady thought it was a steal. And for a split second I felt ashamed of robbing this poor old lady of her 5 bucks, but it was all worth it when I saw the smile on her face when she thought she ‘negotiated’ the price. Ha!

Five dollars here, one dollar there, 50 cents here…really does add up. And by 1pm I was $97.50 richer than I was when I woke up that morning. So it all ended on a good note despite the fact I had to wake up at the crack of dawn. Geez.