Garage Sales Do Not Cure Social Anxiety
A story about the one and only time I ever hosted a garage sale.
To write the stories, I must do the things. This is my motto as of late.
Now, this may seem simple to some, but for anyone with social anxiety, it’s not. I dislike leaving my home immensely.
Sure, come on over. I will make you a three-course meal, all home-cooked and feed you wine until we are both passed out on the floor. But as soon as you suggest that I leave my house to do some sort of peopley thing with all the humans? Nope. Oh, look at that, I’ve suddenly come down with a nasty case of cramps. Shame.
This is why I try to plan things at my house. I like my house because I know where it is. I can locate it quickly with no fear of getting lost. I quite enjoy all of the humans that are there regularly. It’s a win-win situation.
So in hopes of getting to experience life, while staying home, I once decided to have a garage sale.
The hubs and I had just finished packing up the last of our bay after closing down our restaurant. We found ourselves with a glut of kitchen equipment and other completely random things — all those sorts of knick-knacks that would be wonderful for sale-seekin’ folks.
Not to mention I was a bit of a hoarder back then and probably in need of a personal purge myself.
The only problem was, I hadn’t yet realized that garage sales are the absolute worst thing in the world.
I did all of the usual prepping one might, for a garage sale. I created signs to hang on street lamp posts with brightly coloured paper and fat sharpie markers. I advertised our sale on Facebook. I arranged all of the small trinkets and treasures on tables. And we even set up the slush machine so the children could sell slushies to anyone who stopped by.
Our very own garage sale. It was going to be marvellous.
The first customers approached the driveway cautiously with apprehension dripping off their khaki shorts.
Later, I would discover that this is how everyone approaches a garage sale. As if at any moment, the ShamWow guy will pop out from behind a hefty stack of National Geographic’s and start towel-whipping you in the face while screaming about how awesome the fabric he is lashing you with is.
Come to think of it, that’s a pretty legit fear. Lucky for our potential clients (garage sale clients, to be clear—fancy, I know), we did not have any ShamWow guys on the premises.
As the day progressed, people of all types came to view the goods we had on offer.
You see, this right here is the very problem with garage sales. It’s the viewing. It’s those people who meander ever so slowly around a ten-square-foot area and pick up every single item that catches their eye. Then they will stare at the thing mindlessly for a full 40 seconds, place it gingerly back on the table while shaking their head and saying, “Don’t think it’s right for our home.” As if they’re some kind of antique collector.
It’s a buck. For the love of all things thrifty, buy the damn Slap Chop!
The observant reader will note that there is a pattern forming with late-night TV offers. It was the early 2000s, and I had just got my first credit card, kindly don’t judge me.
But instead of buying the Slap Chop, my garage sale patrons would pick up a 25-cent ladle, ecstatic to have found such a steal of a deal.
At this rate, I was never getting rid of my junk.
I would be a withering old woman sitting in her lawn chair under the intense southern Alberta heat, stopping all the youngins as they walked by and asking if they’d like to take a look at my treasures.
I wouldn’t even be able to offer them a cold drink. By that time, the slushies would have dried up, just like the hopefulness in my soul when I announced, centuries before, that I was going to have a garage sale.
In conclusion, maybe going out and trying new things isn’t so bad.
It’s got to beat watching hundreds of people sift through my used belongings while telling me that one dollar for a TV is far too expensive. Plus, I am going to need to get writing material somewhere, and I can only talk about the cheap bastards from my garage sale for so long.
This story was first published on Medium.com. If you’d like to find more Lindsay Rae Brown stories on Medium, consider signing up for Medium with this referral link. As a Medium member, you can get access to thousands of great stories, and as an added bonus (for me), I receive a portion of your $5 monthly fee. This is actually a bonus for you, too, because you can feel good knowing you’re making a poor writer-lady's dreams come true!
That was probably my best pitch, like, ever.
(I’m not very good at this, you guys.)
Had one once. Never again.