From the other side of the table

The Queen of Fifty Cents had a yard sale today.

My belief that these things are way more fun to go to than to have was reconfirmed.

On the other hand, we got rid of some biggish stuff and quite a bit of little stuff, and made a few bucks into the bargain. The leftovers are boxed up for delivery to the thrift store next week. And my car can be parked inside the garage again, woo hoo!

The morning also alleviated a little personal fear I’ve been harboring. This is somewhat embarrassing to admit. Sometimes after I get home from a morning of garaging, I’m afraid that the chatty persona I adopt has been boring or annoying to people. I mean, it seems like we’re all having a good time, but then I start wondering if I’m deluding myself and people are breathing a sigh of relief as I drive away.

(I never said I was not paranoid!)

By the time our sale ended, I was longing for someone like me to come along and strike up a conversation. It’s not that the folks who came by weren’t nice enough people, but there was just no repartee. And what is a Saturday morning for, if not repartee?

Next week I’ll be back on the trail, and when I ask a seller, “So, are you having fun yet?” and wait to see how they’ll reply, I won’t be worrying about sounding like an idiot. Even if I sound like one, it will be a good natured idiot.

We did actually have a little bit of repartee, but that was with our next door neighbor, Kurt. He slept late, and when he got up he saw we were having a sale. So at about 10 a.m. he dragged a couple of things out of his garage to try to get rid of them. The welding stuff sold within five minutes. The ceiling fan went a bit later, then a bike. Then when a guy asked me if we had an exercise bike to sell (nope, still riding my vintage Schwinn every day) Kurt said he used to have one that he tried to sell several time and never could get a taker. I asked if he still had it and he wasn’t sure, so I told him to go look in his garage. (It’s one of those garages!)

Sure enough, he unearthed the thing, dusted it off, and sold it. I tried to convince him he owed me half the sale price since I made him go look for it, but that didn’t fly! He said later he had put it out at least four times when they had sales and no one ever looked at it. Guess it was waiting for just this buyer!