cat named pig

Yard sale. Whew. Glad that’s over. And glad we won’t be doing it again anytime soon. Siena seemed to like it, though — she wants to have another one today, and tomorrow, and the day after. She mentioned this plan repeatedly as I was hauling stuff in last night when it was officially over. I was too tired to respond, so she probably thinks it’s a go. (It’s not.)

Is this boring? I’m getting a little bored typing here. Blah blah blah let me chronicle for you how I sat on my front stoop with Sara and Matt and sold stuff I didn’t want to people who apparently did want it. Which in some cases led us to chuckle as they walked away. There was even a celebratory fist-bump when some crazy suckers put our HUGE, HEAVY entertainment center in their truck and drove away with it. Now we don’t have to move it, ever again! Sweet relief.

And then there was the Star Wars Family. (One quick yard sale story, and then I’ll get back to covering breaking news stories and interviewing celebrities and all the other exciting stuff you normally come here to read.)

The Star Wars Family consisted of Star Wars Dad, a youngish — for a parent — father of a boy who was perhaps Siena’s age. We’ll call the boy Star Wars Son. There was also Star Wars Mom/Grandma, but she came later. . . .

Star Wars Dad* and Son came by Sunday morning and spent a good half-hour looking through every single comic book we had put out for ten cents each. Then they looked through every single VHS tape we had in a cardboard box for twenty-five cents each. (Many of these were Star Wars — perhaps I should be calling my own family the Star Wars Family. People in glass houses. . . on Tatooine. . . shouldn’t throw stones. Or something. You know the saying.)

THEN they spotted the framed Star Wars movie posters, which used to adorn the basement of the house I grew up in. These were a whopping dollar apiece, because we need to give Siena and Elliot room to explore their own geeky obsessions (expect to see framed Nutcracker art in our house very soon). Star Wars Dad was PUMPED when he saw these.

But he didn’t buy them then. He explained that he didn’t have any money, and that he wouldn’t until later in the day. He even asked if we could hold the stuff till Thursday, because he might not have money until Thursday. (I said no — this stuff needs to be OUT of here.)

Since he could have bought everything he wanted for under four dollars, this having-to-wait seemed slightly strange, but I know, times are tight. Whatever. He was obviously a fan, so we set the posters aside for him and he promised to come back later in the afternoon to buy them.

He came back all right — he walked by two or three separate times throughout the day, always with Star Wars Son. And I’m not talking about just strolling by on their way somewhere. I mean they walked along our side of the street, checked out the sale some more, then walked to the corner and crossed to walk back along the other side of our street. More than once.

But the best part was when the sale was over and I was packing stuff up to burn throw in a dumpster try to sell at a friend’s sale in two weeks because I am a masochist.

Star Wars Dad and Son came back, as promised, with Star Wars Mom/Grandma this time. (So named because she was not the mother of Star Wars Son, but of the dad.)

She had the money. And we still had the posters. And the movies. And one of the comics, but not the one they had particularly wanted. (This was disappointing to Star Wars Dad. And to me, because I had to hear about it. A lot.)

Star Wars Mom/Grandma was amazed when I told her the price for the posters. Shocked. Horrified, even. She blinked, looked at me with her mouth agape, and exclaimed, “But you’re practically giving them away! WHY?”

I shrugged and mumbled something about how they were huge and we didn’t have room and I went back to my packing. But then she asked how much the movies were. I told her they were a quarter.

“WHAT? Really?”

“Yeah, seventy-five cents for the set.”

She narrowed her eyes and looked at me with her head to one side. “So, what, do you not even LIKE Star Wars anymore?”

Uh, no, lady. I like Star Wars plenty. I just don’t want to wallpaper my house with it, all right? And we already have not just one, but two boxed sets of the VHS movies. And we also have the DVDs. I think we’re set.

They quickly bought up everything Star Wars-related that we had left and loaded it into the car, probably trying to rush it away from toxic environment of our supposedly Star Wars-hating house.

And that is why we will not be having another yard sale any time soon.

…..

*It is difficult to describe Star Wars Dad without using the word nerd. He was so exuberantly nerdy that he could have been playing a character in Revenge of the Nerds. He was the walking embodiment of every nerd stereotype of the last century — the glasses, the slicked-down hair, the awkward social interaction, the nasal laughter. Everything. I am not trying to be cruel here — just trying to convince myself that this guy was for real. And that he had a child with him calling him “Dad” — indicating the existence, at some point, of some sort of relationship between this guy and an actual woman. Hard to fathom.