I can’t remember a day that revolved around material objects the way this one did. I mean, other than Christmas, that is. I woke up with eight messages about the shit I posted to Facebook Marketplace yesterday. Two of those people actually showed up and gave me money for the stuff I listed. That was a nice start to my day.

Of course, we went straight out and bought more shit. There were tons of garage sales today, but I’ll be damned if we could find any of them. People in this town are disturbingly ego-centric. Everyone makes garage sale signs with their address on them, as if everyone knows where their street is, and the address is always too small to read.

So, the first sale we went to was an estate sale that I saw on Craigslist. It was the estate of a 104-year-old matriarch, at least that’s how it was billed. They bought garage sale signs that had arrows printed with dotted lines on either side of “Garage Sale,” and the idea was that they were supposed to trace the dotted lines of the arrow they wanted to direct their customers to go, but they didn’t do that. They just wrote the address on the sign. I don’t know where the fuck their street is.

So, I was already irritated when we got there, and my mood did not improve. We looked at a few items, and the prices were ridiculous. $20 for board games, $10 a piece for glasses. It was crazy. I walked into the garage, and a large, boisterous woman said good morning to me. I said, “Hi,” but kept walking. She asked me if I lived nearby. Of course I do, I thought, why else would I be here? “Yeah,” I said. “Where?” she asked. What the fuck does it matter? “Just off of…” “So you saw the signs?” she asked eagerly. “No, I saw the ad on Craigslist.” “Oh,” she said, seemingly crestfallen.

I got the impression that she was very proud of her signs. I wanted to tell her what I really thought of them, but didn’t want to engage with her any longer. I looked around and saw some things that caught my eye, but I didn’t pick anything up because I was leery about the prices.

As I walked back through the garage to look at the stuff on the driveway, I passed the awful woman again, and she said, “Oh, I love your shirt. Five dollars for the shirt. Take it off. hahaha.” I politely thanked her. I wondered if I was going to have to put up with her until I left the sale.

I decided to pull the trigger and went around and picked up everything that caught my eye. I grabbed a VHS tape rewinder, eight VHS tapes, a HI-8 tape, and three cassette tapes. I stacked all of the tapes on top of the rewinder and walked over to a table on the driveway I hadn’t seen yet. As I walked out of the garage, I dropped one of the cassette tapes. This created quite a stir among the six or seven people in the garage, all of whom seemed to be working the sale.

Everyone started asking me if I wanted a bag. I told everyone that I didn’t, but a woman brought me a paper bag. I told her I didn’t want the paper bag. She took this news as if it was the first time she was hearing it, and not the fourth time I said it. “Are you sure?” she said. “I’m positive,” I said in a much more stern tone than I had intended. She went back into the garage and told another woman that I didn’t want the bag.

Just then, a man asked how much something was. It was some sort of brass plumbing fitting in its original package from thirty years ago. The old man that he asked threw out a price of $5. I didn’t catch what the customer said, but the old man lowered his price to $3. The customer said $1, but the old man stayed firmly on $3, pointing out that it was new in its original package. The customer walked away.

I asked how much they wanted for everything in my arms, and braced myself for the answer, but none of the half-dozen people could give me a price. That horrible woman was the only one who could help me. She pointed to the rewinder and asked if it was an answering machine. Did you have an answering machine in the garage? Because I didn’t see one.

“It’s a VHS tape rewinder,” I said, pointing to one of the VHS tapes stacked on top of it. She paused for a moment and said, “Oh, $5.” “For everything?” I asked. “Yeah, it’s V-H-S,” she replied. I pulled out my wad of cash. $1,338 to be exact. I skipped through my singles to get to the five-dollar bills, and tugged one out of the stack, trying not to drop all of the shit in my arms. The woman looked at the grip of cash in my hands and said, “Oh, maybe $20.” I gave a polite chuckle and handed her $5.

At a thrift shop a little while later, I found a couple of Hi-8 video tapes that promise home videos. I’m excited to see what’s on them, but I don’t have a way to play them at the moment. I spent the rest of the day repairing a VHS-C to VHS adapter that came with my haul at the estate sale. I hadn’t even realized it was in there. They had left the battery in it, and it corroded, so I couldn’t release the VHS-C tape that was in there. I got it out, and the tape played perfectly. More home movies, yay!.

I cleaned up all of the corrosion, but now I have to figure out how to put the tape back together again. I would have already, but my mom texted me to say that she sold her house, and she had a bunch of stuff for me to pick up. So, I drove over to her house. All I asked for, was a terracotta mission that was in the backyard my whole life growing up, and a painting that hung over the living room sofa.

I left with much, much more than that, and I’ll be going back at some point for even more. This is what happens every time I clean house and get rid of shit. It’s like it creates a vacuum and instantly pulls shit in to replace the shit that left. When does it end?

On the bright side, though, I made $65 dollars from selling shit today, but only spent $5.99. So, I’m still ahead.