BY LORI CULWELL
In preparation for our big move, we put some stuff aside to sell at a yard sale this morning. We got the second shift at a big family yard sale up the street, which some people wouldn't want because they want to be out there right at 7:00 am when the early birds show up, to start the haggling game. But, as we've already established, I don't have kids, so there's no way in HELL I'm going to get up that early on a Sunday, even if there's money involved. Besides, I have a general distaste for yard sales and the people who go to them. Like, one minute something's good enough to be in my house, and the next minute a woman who looks like she's homeless is seeing if she can get me down to $2. Just…yikes.
We had a bunch of stuff, though, that we wanted to try to sell before we donated it, so we decided to do the 11 – 2 shift today. Now's the part when I'm going to switch over to a time-stamped list, so you can see how the day just grew more and more hilarious.
10:30 am– While Stephan and our friend are unloading the stuff, I go to CVS to get water and change. I'm standing in line at CVS when, no lie, a man RUNS in and goes "EXCUSE ME–EXCUSE ME! to the row of cashiers. When someone finally acknowledges him, he shouts "WHERE ARE THE COMBS?" in a tone so urgent, you'd think he needed someone to call 911 for him or to get him some nitroglycerin pills. One of the cashiers goes "Um…Aisle 6, sir," and he RUNS away to go get his comb to address his hair emergency. So, this really sets the tone for the day.
11:17 am– We have all the stuff out, some stuff gets sold right away, and of course there's one totally looney woman who's been there all morning, haggling everyone down on every knick knack. She tries to get Stephan to sell her two steak knives out of a set. He refuses.
12:00 pm– A sour-looking woman who says she owns a preschool shouts "are any of you offering a teacher's discount?" At a yard sale. On things that are a quarter to begin with. Later, I will tell Stephan that she owns a preschool, and he will reply "Which one–McMartin?"
1:00 pm — Comedic actor Dom DeLuise pulls up with a driver. He doesn't want to get out of the car, though, so we have to bring boxes of stuff over to him to he can look through it. He buys my humidor, and some stuff from a woman who used to own a party store (including a bunch of ballerina costumes). As soon as he leaves, my friend's neighbor, a lovely Japanese woman named Keiko, leans over to me and says "Why he need twelve tu-tus?"
1:15 pm– I run into the house of JoAnn, the yard sale ringleader, and say "Dom DeLuise just left! You missed him!" With a straight face, she replies: "He comes to all the yard sales….he never wants to get out of the car."
2:15 pm — The sale is over. We are hot and tired. The things that we were previously calling stuff, Stephan is now calling "shit," because he's the one that has to take the excess to Goodwill.
2:30 — I'm getting ready to leave, and some of the other yard salers start offering me their stuff that didn't sell. I tell them I don't want to get a divorce, and that is what will happen if I come home with any NEW stuff from the yard sale. One of them laughs, then tries to put a fifteen year old beige Knotts Berry Farm Candle shaped like a magical tree in a bag for me. "Use it as a White Elephant Gift," she says. I am extremely tempted to take the candle and give it to someone as a joke for Christmas, but again, I have my relationship to consider. She also tries to tempt me with a two-foot high florescent green frog that she won at the Santa Monica Pier (I couldn't get her to tell me how much she actually PAID trying to win the frog. Ouch). She says "Don't you have any friends with kids?" I want to say yes, but I want them to still be my friends, so there's no way I can show up with a two foot tall, three feet wide florescent frog. Because I want my friends to like me, you see.
3:00 pm — The yard sale is over, we are $150 richer, and the rest of the stuff is at the Goodwill. Stephan's neck is sunburned, and once again, we've had our fill of children for the weekend.