Yard sale

On Saturday, Bryan and I had a yard sale with a couple of friends. It was all of our first times hosting a yard sale as adults, and things started off a little rocky. “Did anyone make signs to advertise this?” “Did anyone get tables to set things on?” “Did anyone get cash to make change?” 

By the time we opened at 7:00 a.m., we had breakfast tacos in-hand, full glasses of mimosas, and 75% of our things displayed in the driveway. Because priorities.

Our first customers arrived at 7:00 on the dot – most notably, a woman with tightly cropped, curly hair wearing a snug Garth Brooks tour t-shirt. She was a broad lady with a raspy smoker’s laugh and a Canadian accent, and boy did she like to talk.

First, she cornered Taylor, asking her questions about clothing she was hanging up. Then, she spent 10 minutes talking to Lauren about a Nashville sign she was selling while Lauren stared back at her in a sleepy daze. Then, she moved on to Bryan, who was sitting at a table displaying various bike components for sale. She asked questions about each bike part, even though she clearly had no use for any of them.

She never did approach me for conversation, probably because I was frantically unpacking boxes of miscellaneous kitchen items and giving off serious “it’s too early to socialize” vibes.

After 30 minutes, the woman made her selections and presented the armful of items to Taylor, who totaled them up. Then, the woman carried her new possessions to her car and loaded them in her back seat as we waved goodbye. Just as we had picked up our mimosas for another sip, she reappeared with a couple of plastic grocery bags, which she carried back down the driveway to Lauren.

“Here, uhh, sell these items for me,” she said.

“What? Um, I don’t think we need any other -” Lauren protested.

“I’ll just put them over here by the other clothes,” the woman said, dumping the bags on the ground in a heap. She scurried away before anyone could object again.

“Did a stranger just deposit clothes at our sale?” Lauren asked aloud as the woman drove away. “Can people do that?” She walked to the pile and bent over it to pull apart the woman’s contributions. Then, she jumped back.

It was silky, lacy lingerie. Straight from grocery bags in the back seat of a Canadian Garth Brooks fan’s car.

We valued the pile at $0.25, and no one touched it for the rest of the day.