This weekend, my Mother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law had a garage sale. Bri, DAvid and I went over the help out. This was the first time I was at a garage sale where I was not selling or buying. I was just sitting back and observing.
Observing people at a garage sale has to be the “ULTIMATE” in people watching. What a diverse group! We saw everything from the well dressed couple driving the brand new convertible Jaguar to the old beater with 8 people crammed in it. We met most of the neighbors and got caught up on all the neighborhood gossip, whether we wanted to or not.
We got the couple that were on a mission…once they parked, the husband came and asked us specific questions like “Do you have any old guns? Do you have any toys from before 1950? Do you have any military badges, patches, uniform or insignia of any kind? Do you have Law Enforcement of Fire uniform, badges, or insignia of any kind?”, etc. He rattled off about 10 questions for specific things he was looking for, meanwhile his wife went through what was available for sale and purchased those things that struck her fancy.
We met the guy who read Randy Pausch’s book. Randy is the guy who became famous the world over for giving a “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon while battling Pancreatic Cancer. He passed just a few months ago. Anyway, this bargain hunter read Randy’s book and the thing he took away from was to negotiate for EVERYTHING. He asks for a discount everywhere he goes and usually gets one! LOL! Doesn’t matter if it’s a garage sale or Home Depot.
Then there were the people who were so “single minded” in their garage sale-ing that they did some things I would consider unusual. One gentleman came racing up the street looking for us and when he spotted us, he slammed on the breaks, opened the door, unbuckled his seatbelt, and was rolling out of the door all while his vehicle was still in motion. Apparently his right hand (aka “the gear shift hand”) wasn’t as fast at getting the car into park as the left hand was at getting him out of the car.
The other one I loved was the lady who came up the street in her black sports car, when she saw the yard sale she threw the car in park, opened the door and came over to inspect the goods. It didn’t occur to her to actually pull over to the side of the road so other cars could get around her…or…close her door so other cars could get around her…or even shut her engine off for that matter.
Yep, garage sales are an interesting opportunity to people watch.
Filed under: Family, Observations Tagged: | garage sale, Observations
