The yard sale went well, except for the “early birds” who flew into my garage 20 minutes before the event was to begin and rifled through a whole bunch of things that weren’t for sale, asking me impatiently how much I wanted for each not-for-sale item. But they left a dollar behind for a tiny picture frame so I came close to forgiving them.
I’ve done some hard labour in my days for some very low wages but this was by far the toughest $62 I ever have earned. Between cleaning things up, putting pricetags on them, hauling everything out to the driveway and then sitting in the cold for five hours haggling with strangers who wanted our stuff and being slightly wounded by those who didn’t, it was a tough go. Still, before morning’s end, half our surplus inventory of goods was riding off down the street in somebody else’s trunk so we declared ourselves the winners.
That is, until one transaction that occurred late in the event.
For 15 years, my wife and I have had three white plastic lawnchairs that we inherited and that I had gradually come to loathe. They attracted dirt like kids in a playground and it seemed we were constantly scrubbing them down. Since then, we’ve accumulated various, more trendy green chairs that, while probably just as dirty, don’t seem to be, so we happily sit in them.
“I’ll sure be glad to see the last of these,” I muttered to my wife as I got them ready to sell.
Except that nobody wanted them. The yard shoppers didn’t even glance at them. However, with 10 minutes left in the sale, my next-door neighbour wandered over, looked at the chairs, and asked me what we wanted for them.
“Fifty cents each,” I replied, hopefully.
Strangely, the look on my neighbour’s face was one of someone who has just found a Stradivarius violin selling for $50 in a small shop in Italy. He could hardly believe his luck. He gave me two dollars, and when I tried to return his change, he said, “Keep it!” That’s the sort of thing Stradivarius discoverers say. It was at this moment I began to suspect that I’d let go of something I shouldn’t have, or, at the least, had sold it too cheaply.
And I was soon to also realize that, far from being out of my sight forever, the chairs would now taunt me every summer from the back sundeck of my neighbour’s home where he happily set them up three minutes after buying them.
The next day, he had a party, and I watched as people made good use of the chairs we couldn’t stand and suddenly I realized that the biggest thing I wanted in my life at that moment was to have my lawnchairs back. And I started to wonder how I could possibly arrange to make that happen. I am ashamed to report that a midnight theft occurred to me as an option.
In the two weeks since then, on my nightly walks around town, I have seen white lawnchairs, identical to ours, on every second porch I pass. These white plastic lawnchairs, it seems, are the only ones a homeowner with any sense would be caught dead in.
And when I get back from my walks, I sometimes sit on a green plastic chair, which suddenly has the appeal of an old tree stump, and look over at the nice white chairs on my neighbour’s deck. They shine in the sunlight, glow in the moonlight – true patio treasures that I let slip through my fingers.
All for the sake of a buck and a half.
And yes, those are the sad strains of a forlorn Stradivarius we are both hearing the background right now.
©2004 Jim Hagarty
