THE GARAGE SALE by Tellu a:link{text-decoration : none} a:visited {text-decoration : none} a:active {text-decoration : none} a:hover { pont-weight: none ; text-decoration:underline; color black }
THE GARAGE SALE
by Tellu



There are three things that are more overrated than anything else on the planet: Hot chicken soup, sex and parking your car in the garage.
What's such a big deal about parking your car in the garage if you have to exit by threading your body through an open window, hang from a lawn sprinkler, climb over the roof, and slide down an ivy-covered trellis ("You cut off that ivy and I'll cut up your photo album, Mimete!") before reaching the door?
Our garage was a Twilight Zone for garbage, used cars, old papers, boxes, excess laundry, redeemable bottles, and "projects" too awkward (big, stinking or dirty) to fit in the house. So was everybody else's. In fact, there was a clause in most insurance policies that stated if we were folded, bent, splindled, or mutilated while walking through our garage, the insurance company would not have to pay.
Then one day, something happened to change all that. Cyprine came into my office so excited she could barely speak. "How would you like to go to a garage sale?" she asked.
"I already have one, thank you very much."
"You don't buy the garage, you ninny," she said. "That's where the sale is held. A woman over in the Dreamland Casitas subarb just advertised and I want to check it out."
A good fifteen blocks away from the sale, we saw the cars...bumper to bumper. I had never seen such a mob since the fire drill at the Health Spa.
We parked the car and walked, slowly absorbing the carnival before our eyes. On the lawn, a woman was trying on a skirt over her slacks. "Do you do alterations?" she yelled to the person who had sold it to her.
"For 25 yen you ain't getting an audience with Martha Stewart!"
Inside, mad, crazy, frenzied ladies fought over an empty anti-freeze can for 150 yen and an ice-cube tray for 55 yen.
One lady was lifting the tires off the family car and yelling, "HOW MUCH?"
Another was clutching a hula hoop over her shoulder and asking, "Are you SURE this is an antique?"
Outside, Cyprine and I leaned against a tree. "Can you believe this?" I asked. "I feel like I'm at Alice's tea party." "What did you buy?" asked Cyprine excitedly.
"Don't be ridiculous. It's all a bunch of junk no one wants. I didn't see anything in there that I couldn't live without."
"What's that under your sweater?"
"Oh, this. It's the only thing worth carrying out." I held up a picture of the Last Supper, done in a bottlecap medium.
"Isn't it exquisite?" I asked.
"You have GOT to be kidding me," Cyprine said. "That is the WORST looking picture I've ever seen. How much did you pay for it?"
"600 yen."
"600 YEN!" Cyprine doubled over. As she laughed, an electric iron dropped from her handbag.
"What's that?"
"An iron. I really needed an extra one."
"But the handle's missing!"
"So why do you think I only paid 1200 yen for it?"
"Look," said a lady who was standing at our elbow, "are you going to buy this tree or just stake it out so no one else can claim it?"
"N- no," I stammered, moving away.
I didn't think she was serious, but she dug her shovel into the soil and started moving dirt.

To tell the truth, I didn't give the garage sale another thought until Tellu said to me one day, "Why don't we stage a garage sale?"
"Because spreading one's personal wares out for public exibition is not only crass, it smacks of being tacky."
"My friend Pauline made 1800 yen."
"GET THE CARD TABLE!" I screamed.
The others were less than enthusiastic. "Those things are like a circus," Kaolinite said. "Besides, we need all this stuff."
"HAH!" I said, "This stuff is junk. One day we won't be able to move, what with boxes of rain-soaked Halloween masks and stacks of boots with one missing from each pair. If you all want to live like pack rats, that's your business, but I've got to make a path through this junk- and soon!"
In despiration, they gave in, and the garage sale was scheduled on Thursday, from 9 AM to 5 PM.
At 6:30 AM, a woman with a face like a ferret pecked on my kitchen window and said, "I'll give you 30 yen for this doorstop!"
I calmly informed her that the doorstop was Professor Tomoe, who is none too swift in the mornings, and if she didn't put him down and get the hell out of there, I would summon the police.
By 7:30, there were fifteen cars parked in the driveway, nineteen on the lawn, two blocking traffic in the center of the road, and a Yugo trying to park between the two andirons in the living room fireplace.
At 9 AM I opened the garage door and was immediately trampled to death. Tellu said she'd never seen anything like it.
They grabbed, pawed, sifted through, examined and tried out anything that wasn't nailed down...but THEY WEREN'T BUYING!
"What's the matter with them?" I asked.
"It's this junk. It's priced too high," Tellu realized.
"Too high!" I exclaimed, "These heirlooms? Do you honestly think that 800 yen is too high a price for a box of candle stubs? And take that stack of boots for 500 yen each. They don't make rubber like that anymore. And take this potty chair..."
"For 1200, YOU take it," snarled a potential pigeon. "You can buy a new one for 1500."
"You're going to have to lower the prices," whispered Tellu.
She was right, of course. But she should have prepared me for the attitude change I was about to experience once I sold the first piece of junk.
I became a woman possessed. As one by one the items disappeared from the card tables and the nails on the side of the garage, I could not stand to see the people leave.
They bought boots with holes in the side, electric toothbrushes with a short in them, a phonograph that turned counter-clockwise and and an underground booklet listing the grades of Yale Medical School graduates 1927-1949.
The junk began to clear out and I knew what I must do to keep them there. Running into the house, I grabbed dishes out of the cupboards, clothes out of the closets, and books off the shelves.
I snatched Viluy's new electric drill and marked it 300 yen. I ripped the phone off the wall and sold it for 175. When Pucherol came home from school, I yanked her out of her car and sold it for 100000 yen.
I grabbed a woman by the throat and said, "Want to buy a fur coat for 100 yen? I was going to give it to my sempai, but she looks like a tub in it."
"I AM your sempai!" Eudial snapped.
To be perfectly honest, I lost control. Tellu had to physically restrain me from pricing Hotaru, who was being admired by a customer and cooed, "I'd like to take you home with me."
It was nine at night before the last car left the driveway. I was exhausted, physically and mentally.
"Did I do all right?" I asked Tellu.
She hesitated, "In another year or two, when you are well, we will talk about today."
"I don't know what happened to me."
"You WERE a little excited."
"Are you trying to tell me I went nuts?"
"I'm trying to tell you it was wrong to sell your garbage for 40 yen."
"But she insisted," I protested.
"By the way," Tellu asked, "what's that under your arm...YOU BOUGHT SOMETHING FROM YOUR OWN GARAGE SALE?"
"It's nothing," I hedged.
She snatched te package and opened it. "It's your laundry! Hw much did you pay for this?"
"200 yen," I said, "but some of it still fits."



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