imagined-community

Mindy. Presale. 7:00 a.m.

Ah, the yard sale! (Or as we say in the Midwest, the rummage sale. I hear in Britain they call them car boot sales.) On Saturday, I helped Mindy with our third, and possible final, yard sale. Thus a little bit of reminiscing is in order…

My friendship with Mindy developed during my first year of graduate school at UNC, when we were partnered for a year to coordinate an academic conference. I was a little dazzled by Mindy (she is a wonderful storyteller and very funny) and felt self-conscious about my extreme self-consciousness and occasionally off-putting nervous energy. But we worked amazingly well together and had lots of fun and she didn’t seem to mind my neurotic streak. Still, my insecurity about my own worth meant that for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why she kept inviting me to do things with her. But she did, and I went, and seven years later I still admire her astounding ability to simultaneously play well with others and get things done with maximum efficiency — all while looking fabulous ; - ) I’ll miss you Scottish Mindy!

So… back to yard sales. Saturday’s sale in Durham was fairly tame. I only made up one fake identity for myself while talking with a customer that I believed was attempting to scam us. Mindy & Paul sold all the furniture. (As any yard saler knows, it is a happy moment when that last piece of furniture goes!) Of course, not everybody likes yard sales. For a funny, bitter (and all true) rant on the yard sale read 3mote.

If you are reading this blog from outside of the United States you may not be familiar with the American cultural phenomenon of the yard sale. Basically, a sale where you take your old junk — books, clothes, furniture, kitchen plates, anything really — and put it on display in your garage, on your lawn, or on the sidewalk if you live in a city. You price everything very cheaply, say 50 cents for a shirt. Then you pull out the lawn chairs and spend a Saturday morning and afternoon drinking coffee, eating donuts, chatting people up, and, of course, haggling over prices. Early in the morning sellers are somewhat inflexible on prices, but by the end of the day you are offering people amazing deals with the wild hope that you will not have to repack all that shit and haul it back inside. Often the yard sale has a carnivalesque feeling. Best of all, aside from getting money for your junk, you meet lots of people, some stranger than others.

To get a taste of what yard sales are all about check out the trailer from the documentary, “Yard Sale.”