Memoirs of a Fat Girl

Last week was a week of men. Men, boys, whatever, and this past weekend played into that too.

On Saturday we had our annual family garage sale. We’ve been doing it every June for the past handful of summers because of 1) tidy profits, and 2) we have a lot of junk. Not junk so much as stuff, but there’s a lot of it nonetheless. Things tend to pile up after so many moves, and you can’t keep those boxes in your parents’ basement forever.

A garage sale is a crazy time. You have to clean through all your piles for days before the event, categorize, box and carry it all to the garage, make & put up signs, possibly advertise, get a cash float, then wake up mega early to accommodate your customers, the bulk of who like to do their shopping between seven and 9am.

This sounds like a lot of work for a few bucks and it is, but it’s not all about the money. A garage sale is cleansing, the post-modern purification of the soul. You’re lightening your load, losing dead weight, and having the wonderful satisfaction of knowing that something you don’t want, have brushed aside for years, is starting a whole new life somewhere else.

But still, the cash doesn’t hurt either.

The prices on our driveway, we’ve been told, are much higher than your standard garage sale. That said, most people have no problem paying the prices on our driveway because, as we’ve been told, my sister and I take superb care of our stuff.

For instance, last year one woman asked me the prices of our books. I told her one dollar per paperback and two dollars per hardcover, when she retorted back with, “Everyone knows that the standard price for books at garage sale is 25 cents!”

Without missing a beat, I told her the book she was holding was a trade paperback, not mass market, was two years old, in perfect condition, and didn’t have a single crack on the spine. I also told her that if it was a romance novel circa 1972 with a missing cover and dog-eared everything, I’d be more than happy to take a quarter.

Needless to say, she coughed up a dollar pretty quick.

Anyway, bottom line, our stuff ain’t cheap in garage sale land. However, if it’s something you want to get rid of just for the sake of getting rid of it, let’s talk power sale, baby!

Example: in the furthest recesses of the basement is a box labeled PRICK. Metaphorically labeled anyhow, I wouldn’t go so far as to write that all over a box, even if its contents belong to Jess.

That’s right, the ex-boyfriend box made the cut. It’s not like I’ve heard boo from him for almost a year and that said, he can’t be too attached to anything in there. I bought most of it anyway, meaning I get the final say as to what happens to it.

So one woman/customer is going through some things I’ve just laid out on the table, and one of them happens to be a Jess shirt. I still remember the day I bought him that shirt, a nice short-sleeved rust surfer boy dealie with maroon detailing along the bottom. She holds it up and says, “How much?”

The shirt’s in phenomenal shape, is about four years old, but hasn’t been worn for the past two at least. If it was one of mine I wouldn’t take less than four dollars, however, every now and then we have rules to follow, the first of which is: Rid yourself of crap karma at (almost) all costs.

“Ma’am, you’re in luck. That shirt you’re holding there is a part of the infamous, ‘I hate my Ex-Boyfriend’ pile, and it can all be yours for the low low price of 10 dollars!”

Her eyebrows perked up. There were a good dozen shirts of his lying around her, all fairly recent and in great condition, and then she said, “Do you hate him for eight dollars?

Ah, bargaining. The great constituent of garage sales. I thought it over, and even though the whole point of this was to get rid of these things, I decided not to fall trap for Rule #2: Never sell yourself short, especially if what you’re offering is too good to be true. “Nope, sorry. I hate him for 10.”

With that she took the lot and I watched a handful of Jess’ old clothes go away, away from me. It was good.

Many would argue that holding out for a couple of extra bucks somehow ties me to him, that I didn’t want to get rid of his things that badly. In fact, even selling any of it, as opposed to giving it away, is full of symbolism in its own right.

I beg to differ.

After the garage sale was over, I went to the market and picked up for myself a bottle of Boylan’s vintage root beer. Boylan’s is made with all natural ingredients, and is sold in glass bottles here for almost two bucks a pop.

Back home, I put the bottle in the freezer, pulling it out when it was so cold it couldn’t get any colder without being slush. I savoured my root beer sitting on the grass, enjoying the beautiful day with my dog.

His stuff, my stuff, two bucks. The moral of the story: a couple of extra dollars can go a long way. Even a truckload of bad memories can make way for a good one, if you play your cards right.