This year, we hauled out all of our garage sale stuff (how does one get so much STUFF???) and settled in with much better weather for our garage sale. Dawn - who is happily married - and I - who is (am? are? be?) also happily married - sat most of the day in our camp chairs making change and getting rid of our salt and pepper shakers and area rugs.
Dawn's husband went to an auction for most of the day and bought more stuff. The Dad, who had gotten up at 4:30 that morning to actually CLEAN the garage for me, dozed off and on all day in the recliner. It was of no concern to us. Dawn and I are big girls. We take care of bloody noses, broken hearts, pee-soaked shoe laces and lost lunch cards on a daily basis; we can handle a garage sale - easy as pie!
It was about an hour before we were to close the sale, customers were starting to slow way down and then an interesting character showed up. For the sake of clarity, we'll call him "Stoney" - in looking back at our time with Stoney, we're not certain that he was at-that-time in an altered state of being, or if he had so often been in such a state, that it had permanently become his state of being - either way, Stoney was under the influence of something that Stoney shouldn't have been under the influence of!
Stoney, who we guessed was around our age, first came to us wanting to know if our price on a broken steam cleaner that we were selling for parts was the lowest we'd go. I explained to him that it didn't work and he said it didn't matter to him "as long as it worked" (true story), he could fix it. "Well, it doesn't really work," I reiterated. He reiterated that it didn't matter. BUT, before we could negotiate, he needed my name. I told him my name was Heather... Heather Davis. He chose to call me Mrs. Davis because that's the way he was raised, to be respectful of his elders. I doubled the price and then negotiated. He didn't take the steam cleaner.
(Eventually, he admitted his age - he was only four years younger than me and one year younger than Dawn! Clearly, we wouldn't be so nice in our negotiations in the future!)
Then he discovered the lamps we had for sale! And who doesn't like a good lamp because they provide, "ya know, light when it's, ya know, dark". So, we negotiated a price for the lamp or lamps. He didn't take the any of them lamps.
He moved on to the dog bowl. We had marked fifty cents on it, but we'd sell it for ten cents. This thrilled him as he had several new puppies at home including three solid white ones. When we didn't act sufficiently amazed at three solid white puppies, he told us that he was a misunderstood writer, "Sort of a cross between Shakespeare and Hemingway's cussing. So, you'll take ten cents for the dog bowl?" He gave us fifty cents.
He sat the bowl back down on the table and put his wallet in it. We looked for the dog bowl and wallet on three different occasions following this one act.
It was after about 20 minutes of Stoney moving from item to item, negotiating a lower price and then not buying it that Dawn and I began wondering where the heck our big, strapping husbands were. It's not that we couldn't take Stoney if push came to shove - Dawn & I are a scrappy pair! - but we were certain if he had to share our attention with anyone else, specifically any other male, that he'd go already, and we wouldn't have to hear any more about how he drove a much better car than the '98 Grand Am the garage gave him while they "changed the oil out in his tricked out Escalade."
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| We threw in the wooden trash can and white binders to sweeten the deal! |
Finally, he saw the comforter set. He decided he'd like to purchase the comforter set for his momma because he really does love his momma - who was in Oklahoma City shopping, even though she's on bed rest. So, he wanted to take it out of the bag and get a closer look at the $7 queen comforter. "Mrs. Davis," he asked as the three of us stood in the middle of my driveway holding a red and gold comforter, "could I get to come down on the comforter price any for my bed-resting-shoppin' momma?"
I turned to Dawn and said, "Ask her. It's her comforter."
"It's not mine," Dawn insisted. "I thought it was yours."
"Nope. This isn't mine." I responded, trying to not let my nervous giggle escape.
"I'm pretty sure this isn't mine," Dawn said, avoiding eye contact.
Stoney, thinking he finally had his hand on the pulse on mine and Dawn's "relationship" said, "Ummm... maybe if you still have it when I come get the desk, I'll buy this, too." And he began folding up the comforter, oragami-style. Stoney was nervous as it involved a lot of squatting and stepping back. Dawn tried to guide the folding, but it was no use. Eventually, the comforter was wadded up and placed back on the table.
Stoney then put his hands together in a prayerful position in front of his chest and bowed to me, "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Davis." Then he turned to Dawn, bowed and said, "You, too, Mrs. Davis." And then, after a good 30-plus minutes of shopping at our garage sale, he finally left.
If I had known that Stoney's departure was dependent on mine and Dawn's non-existent marriage to each other, I'd have called her "honey" when he didn't buy the steam cleaner!
And... The desk? It's still in my front yard! The comforter? No idea where it came from. That's just how good our garage sales are!
