drama at the yard sale!

Yard sales are funny. Just like an airport, they're a fabulous place to people-watch. Shoppers will haggle over a quarter, women will tell you to your face that your prices are too high and that the clothes you're selling (and that they're buying) are ratty. Old men look through your old VHS movies and tell perverted, out-of-context jokes that you don't know what to do with. Mexican families who speak about 10 words of English between them show up by the van-load and peruse items with a very specific sort of frugality and intensity. Usually at yard sales, I don't sell a lot. You put in a lot of work the week or two before, compiling items, pricing them out, making and hanging signs, placing an ad, and crossing your fingers that sacrificing a perfectly good Saturday morning typically spent sleeping in and lounging around in your pj pants will be worth it.

Yesterday's sale was actually worth it. I was fortunate this time to do the yard sale at a neighbor's house with a great setup. I didn't even have to go in on the ad (I wasn't allowed), or hang signs. My neighbor had a lot more things to sell and made a boatload more money, but for me, who didn't have one item over $2, I did pretty good, raking in about $60. We had a regular stream of traffic from about 45 minutes before the sale officially started, through til noon. The better part of the morning was also cloudy, which means it wasn't as brutal a heat as it could have been, for a North Carolina morning in June.

Drama pulled up in an SUV midway through the sale in the form a mother (early 30s) and daughter (about 7), with their little chihuahua/Boston-mix puppy. They lived just around the corner. The mom was friendly enough, loquacious with both us and the other yard salers, and seemingly down to earth. She picked out several Brat Pack movies from the VHS box, so you know she had to be all right. The interesting thing about her shopping method, though, was the level of indiscrimination. Yard salers tend to be quite picky; most know what they're looking for, and if it's not there, sayonara. And people want a bargain, yes, but if they're on the fence at all about something, regardless of how cheap, it seems like more often than not, they walk away. This lady did not walk away from much of anything. If she or her daughter liked the item even a little bit, onto the pile it went. Armloads of clothes, kid crafts, videos, my entire stack of CDs. She barely looked at stuff before deciding yes, I totally want that toothbrush holder/tissue box cover/soap dispenser set for my bathroom. She didn't care if it was cracked, or if the clothes had holes. A few items my neighbor even tried to talk her down from, and she dismissed it. Not a problem, she said. Some yard salers, too, are in the resale business, like for flea markets and eBay, but this women acted as though she intended to use each and every item. And no special occasion, either. She didn't seem like a career yard saler, it just seemed like they were out for a random Saturday jaunt to sales around the neighborhood.

Under an hour later, all the lawn chairs we had been sitting on and the surrounding patch of driveway were filled with piles of the To Be Bought. Something in my brain told me not to get too excited about the biggest sale of the day before I actually had cash in hand, but I added up the items anyway, and gave her a loose estimate of $17, which was quite a markdown. My neighbor also intended to give her a break, but while she was deciding the price, the woman sunk down into one of the chairs. All the color drained from her face, neck and shoulders, and her eyes closed. Shopped until she literally dropped. Clearly she was having some sort of moment, and my initial guess was that she became dehydrated and overheated in the now-present sun. She had trouble forming sentences, giving out her husband's phone number so we could call him for help. She couldn't manage to drink any water. The daughter, while helpful, remained interestingly unphased. If the girl was really worried, she didn't show it.

The cynical, skeptical asshole side of me starts to think that either a) this woman realized how much she was about to spend and was embarassed she didn't have the cash with her, b) she is a yard-sale scammer, and would somehow walk away with all this stuff for a ridiculously low price, or c) that this is something she does for attention. The nice, sympathetic, non-asshole side of me also considered that it could be d) a legitimate health issue, which would surely be both scary and embarassing for the woman and her daughter.

Actually, after all was said and done, it was not quite clear what the deal was. I just kind of watched the whole thing unfold without any conclusive judgment or alarm. My neighbor and her mother walked the woman into the house to use the bathroom, which she never made it to. She kind of slumped to the floor instead and drifted in and out of coherency. She managed to relay her mother's phone number, and her mother confirmed that this happens quite a bit to her daughter. Doctors apparently aren't sure what or why it happens, but she's been undergoing tests for some sort of diagnosis. Her husband finally picked up his phone later, after the ambulance crew arrived, and said he would be right over to get their daughter.

Meanwhile, K.Lo and I are out on the lawn, keeping tabs on the sale and trying not to crowd the scene. No one's really there at the moment other than an older Greek woman who is talking our ears off about Scorpio babies and I can't really understand what else. I nod and smile and say "yeah" a lot, and kind of hope she shuts up soon. She knows my neighbor and wants to say hello, and though it's more than obvious that there's a scene happening and that my neighbor's on the phone just behind the glass front door, she walks up and rings the doorbell anyway. It's the oddest thing.

The rescue squad wheels up a stretcher to the house, but the woman doesn't end up using it. She stumbles out of the house, still faint and mumbling that she's all right, while the EMTs walk alongside her, briskly informing her that yes, she's saying she's all right, but in actuality, she's still faint and mumbling. They do one more test on the lawn, and then she loads herself up into the ambulance. Meanwhile, we've got piles of unpaid-for clothes and things all over our lawn chairs, and a now-hopping crowd at the sale. I'm a little ticked because someone else could be buying the stuff, yet I'm also distracted with the ambulance still there. Fascinatingly, not one of the current shoppers seem particularly phased by the ambulance and the hub-bub, no one even asks what's going on and/or if everything's okay. They just want to know if I'll cut them a deal if they buy more than one item. And, distracted, I cave. Maybe it's an elaborate neighborhood plot to shave a few more quarters off our profits, and the fainting lady is at the head of the operation.

Moments after I return heaps of the woman's unbought clothes and CDs and movies to my own piles (she wouldn't remember what she wanted anyway, right?), her husband shows up to take the family home. The puppy has been barking from the car, the daughter is freaked because she misplaced her wallet, and another dog, apparently the puppy's mother, jumps out the window and into the street. It's a total circus. And then the woman suddenly becomes lucid enough to remember that she needs to pay for all her crap. She remembers that I said $17. My neighbor and I quickly start stuffing all the purchases into boxes and trash bags, muttering here and there, Um, did she pay you, yet? It's completely tacky of us, but on the other hand, between the two of us, she owes us almost 50 bucks. Right?

The woman's husband stands by, plainly rattled that whatever issue is going on with his wife has happened again. I feel the most sorry for him, somehow. All the boxes and bags make it to the car, and he pays us without flinching at the cost or the sheer quantity of things they'll be riding away with. I have to wonder, what does their house look like inside?

And so it goes, the most dramatic yard sale I've ever been to. The rest of the morning passes without incident, though the ambulance fiasco brought us nearly to the end of it all, anyway. As K.Lo and I packed up to go home, my neighbor asked, So you're coming again next year, right? Um, yeah... about that.