Garage Sale as Social Media

I had a garage sale today.

I had a garage sale once before. The previous garage sale was in 1999. Tyler and Jaci had moved in with me after my husband died; nine months had passed, and we were getting ready to move to new abodes. We posted signs, set our stuff on tables in the front yard, and watched as the sky opened up. It poured! We quickly moved all our stuff to the small front porch, where shoppers had to suck their respective guts in to get around each other while viewing our valuable goodies without getting soaked by the rain.

Shortly after I set up my wares, I was hit with a migraine. A big, full aura, pain dripping out my ears migraine. My girlfriend had come over to check out the goods for sale, bringing her three-year-old nonstop-movement daughter. I sat in a dark room, listening while she chatted, and holding my aching head in my hands.

Tyler and Jaci held down the fort on the front porch, answering questions and taking money. All I wanted was to be left alone.

"What are these?" "How to you use this?" "How much do you want for these sunglasses?"

They carefully answered all the questions as well as they could given the fact that they were monitoring my goods as well as their own.

After a couple of hours, my girlfriend took her young daughter and prepared to leave. She looked around, dug through her purse, and asked, "Where are my Prada sunglasses?" After retracing her steps through the house, she decided she just had to go without her sunglasses. I promised to return them as soon as I found them.

A few days later, Tyler and Jaci looked at me during dinner and said, "You remember those glasses your friend was looking for?" I nodded. They laughed self-conciously and said, "We sold them. We didn't know they were hers. Someone wanted them and we sold them."

We've been laughing about those sunglasses for years now!

Today the garage sale became a good opportunity for me to meet neighbors I had never met in the 21 months I've been living here.

I do hate garage sales, but I welcomed the opportunity to make some new friends today.