Here's What I Know

I know what you're thinking and thanks for the vote of confidence. True, I may not know all that much but today I've come to a few realizations and I intend on sharing them with my loyal readers. I will try my best to tailor this one away from sports, but there will be a Patriots reference in here somewhere. I have to, and if you saw the game yesterday (or heard it) you know what I mean.

So one thing that I know is that people who make yard sales a lifestyle are pretty strange folk. La and I assisted my folks at their first such event in ten years this Saturday and sure as you're born , there were some choice attendees. I find that there are three types of people who go to yard sales:

1. The seekers. These people come in with an agenda and you bet your ass that there's no way they will buy anything except for what they came to find. This one guy came mid-morning on Saturday looking for records. He spent all of 2 minutes there, asked if we had any, and promptly returned to his car (which he kept running) when he found out that we were bone dry in the record department. In truth, such gems as Neil Diamond's whole catalog and a sprinkling of Donna Summer were scooped up at the last yard sale. Gems, I tell ya. Gems.

2. The room-fillers. So many people use yard sales as their vehicle for furnishing extra rooms, cottages, houses for sale (for realtors), etc. I respect this genre because I have fallen into this category before. The truth of the matter is, you can find some really valuable stuff at a very small price at yard sales, saving you probably hundreds of dollars on some items. Of course you can also waste a lot of time looking through some old guy's baseball card collection if you let your mind get off track. Then the same guy wants like $30 for his Dykstra rookie card and you realize that one man's valuation system is probably a little off from yours.

3. The habitualists. I love these people. My dad pointed out a pair of them this weekend during a slow period of the yard sale. This couple pulled in a gold Buick, one of them wielding a clipboard and Sharpie. They have fucking lists, folks. Lists. Shit, if you can cross item #144 off that list, which happens to be a Betty Boop Pez dispenser, I guess you can call that a good day. That's a damn good day. Item crossed off the list at our yard sale this weekend: Danielle Steel's Palomino in hardcover. At $.50, it was a freaking steal. Memere is rolling over in her grave because she bought that edition for $17.95.

It was a solid morning at the yard sale, as my parents watched not nearly enough of their old crap disappear into strangers' welcoming arms. There will be another installment next weekend and not to worry, Kansas Jim. No Nintendo exchanged hands on this day. In fact, I didn't even put it out to sell. That's loyalty.

Know what else I know? My father and I are spatially incompetent. Dad, I really hate to lump you in with me on this one, but I have to think that I got it from someone in my lineage and you're the first in line for the distinction. Mom clearly has a better grasp on determining space. What really gets my goat is that for guys like my pop and I, there's just no remedy. We're screwed for life because a cure does not exist. We have to rely on our will and determination to get through sticky situations, such as one we encountered this weekend. Let me paint this picture for you:

There we were in La and I's apartment, trying to shimmy and shake Chip's couch out the front and/or side door so that we could bring in our couch/loveseat combo that has been sitting in my parent's basement for months. I shit you not, that couch almost beat us down that day. We were in a veritable dog fight with the couch and his ally, the door frame. At one point, the two of them had us dead to rights at the top of the stairwell outside the front entrance. At my worst moment, the door frame looked me dead in the eye and said "Not today, young man. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever." We stood at a standstill for 10 minutes, unable to move the couch. When we finally got the couch back into the apartment, we were drained; emotionally and physically. We measured the only other doorway that proposed an exit and it seemed impossible. My encouragingly aggressive mother urged us to try that other doorway again, but standing behind his tape measure, my dad sternly opposed. So we rolled up our sleeves again and move our other couches in without removing Chip's couch. We put it to the side and out of the way and that was that. He'd have to do it himself later on. And he did, with ease. Such ease that him and his brother were able to remove it within 30 seconds, and through the same doorway that my father and I swore could never fit a couch. It was an awesome display, but really deflating. Just another installment in the tales of the spatially inept.

The last thing that I know as of right this second is that the Patriots are almost unspeakably good this season. They have holes, but if you saw them yesterday, you agree that they are pretty scary. And they don't have Richard Seymour or Rodney Harrison on the field yet. I won't say too much about them yet because it's so early, but is Randy Moss really doing the things he did yesterday? Jeesh. I feel bad for opposing secondaries...really, really, bad. But I'm not saying another word until the Charger game next week has been played. That promises to be an early season grudge match between last year's AFC Divisional opponents. Bad blood and all. Strap 'em on, boys. That one should be a fun ride.