by Bob Totterer

Created on: December 16, 2008

It is a very popular urban sport. The urge to play could strike anyone, regardless of age or sex. I'm talking about the garage sale bug and if you've never had it, pray that you never do. Victims of this dreaded obsessive-compulsive disorder are plagued by partial sets of dishes and tools, sacks of clothing that will never leave the sacks and the icy feeling that they've missed the bargain of the century if they don't make that one, final stop. To add insult to injury, it's practically a mathematical certainty that they must host a garage sale for every twenty attended. Have I struck a nerve? Great! Let's do a little play-by-play, shall we?

Wednesday morning at 5:00 AM the alarm goes off. You and the wife hurriedly dress and carefully scrutinize the morning newspaper while munching your Wheaties. With a felt-tipped pen, you circle eight or ten garage sale notices and even plan your route by numbering the stops. Yep, you have it bad. You guys are going to have a trunk full of - well, let's just say that you'll have a full trunk by noon.

That's when you'll get home and sort through the swag. Hmm, let's see. The wife got seven dresses, an orange dishtowel, a pair of shower shoes, a sauce pan and three place settings of Melmac. You got a 7/16" socket, two ten-foot lengths of conduit, a box of hedge trimmer parts and four years' worth of Reader's Digest. And you got it all for $18.50! Yesss!

So where do you put it? For the time being, you stack it in the garage along with the other stuff that's there for the time being. The following week you go out again and return with more of the same. It isn't long before you have to start parking in the driveway. That's when you and the wife look at each other and say, "Let's have a garage sale!"

So you rent eight cafeteria tables and some clothing racks and spend a week hauling things from the basement and attic. Your friends call to ask, "Can I put a few things in your garage sale?" "Sure," you say. Now your yard is beginning to look like a refugee camp. But that's okay because you'll make a fortune off this stuff! To make a long story short, you gross $87.25 on the sale and have to spend $35 of it at the landfill for the items that didn't sell. When you deduct the rental fees and the cost of the newspaper ads, it's a wash. But that's all right. At least you have your garage back.

The following Wednesday, you and the wife go out again. This time, you recognize the people hosting three of the sales. You also recognize some of the items they're selling as having been in your garage sale. "Huh," you blurt out, "this must be the law of reciprocity." "No," says your wife, "it's an Abflex; put it in the trunk."

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