Who ARE You People?!

Who ARE you people...who wake up just before the sun rises on a SATURDAY morning in anticipation of a frenzied forage through other people's dusty junk? I know you take 'THE HUNT' as serious as a heart-attack. I've seen you...cruising neighborhood streets just as the sun rises...newspaper clutched, white-knuckled, 'tag sale' ads circled in red, peeking between your fingers like rheumy-eyed messages from the underworld. Some of you are true professionals, printing out detailed maps with circled locations, precise routes and prospective 'gold mines' listed with strict attention to detail.

You slow for the traditional 'drive by', the experienced yard saler's quick, sharp assessment of a driveway littered with discards and detritus. There are shaky legged tables piled with suspicious clothing, dated appliances and grubby toys. Old speakers bookend the cracked and pitted driveway like silent monoliths of a bygone era. Spread out on the weedy lawn is a pilled and faded blanket displaying a ragged collection of straw handbags, canvas totes, and 'vintage' shoes of dubious origin. Cardboard boxes look ready to collapse with their loads of scratched CD's, empty CD cases, old VHS movies and battered books. There's a dented pink hula hoop, a dog kennel with a broken door, a jumbo-sized tennis ball, bobble-heads and kewpie dolls of every description, and a "Dazey Donut Factory"...still in the yellowed box. Now that your interest is suitably piqued...you do a 12-point U-turn in the middle of the residential street and bring your boat of a car to rest with two wheels on the neighboring lawn, making sure your escape route is free for a mad dash to the next sale.

You cross the street casually, your barely-concealed eagerness cracking the veneer of the indifference you wear like an ill-fitting suit. The moment you cross the foot of the driveway you are multi-tasking madly, eyes flicking and flying, hovering and barely alighting on the melee like flies on a cow. You acknowledge the sellers' cheerful 'Hi'! with a brief nod, or ignore the hungry eyes that follow you like circling vultures. You scan the red-dots and hastily-written price stickers with an outer calm that belies your inner thirst to find some item of value that the owner has under priced and overlooked. Juggling change absentmindedly, you peruse end tables, veneer lifting in the corner, covered in chipped and mismatched dishes and old Tupperware...hoping to spot a teacup marked ''Limoges" on the bottom. Or perhaps you are truly fascinated by collections of old costume jewellery. Earrings with missing stones blink one-eyed at you in the sun, glittering for your attention. If you are savvy, the signed Eisenberg brooch you purchased for a dime and Ebay valued at $350, propels you through the aggregate of chunky plastic pearls.

Once you've found an item worthy of the crumpled bills clutched in your sweaty fist, you warily approach the seller with a look of slight distaste on your face, turning the item over and pointing out obvious flaws, you begin the 'art of yard-sale bartering'. You offer a dime for an item marked a quarter. You offer $5 for an item marked $10 and act as if you are doing them a favor by taking the item off their hands. If they hold out firm, or better yet, adamantly defend their price by quoting the history, original cost, or value of the item, you place it down immediately and hover, expectantly, hoping they will bend in the face of your resolve. Sometimes, if you have nerves of steel, you may actually walk away from the desired item...but come back to the sale later in the day hoping to find the owner's heart appropriately softened after facing the prospects of packing said item up and storing it in their garage again.

Or perhaps you are the breed of yard sale enthusiasts that 'do this for a living'. You scan and reject almost instantaneously, looking only for items priced sufficiently low with enough resale value to allow you to list them on Ebay (with an inflated 'shipping and handling' charge,) or at a flea-market.

It all just confused me. Until last week, that is.

My mother-in-law dragged me out to help her at her table in the local community center tag sale. I sat there, my face burning in mortification as I tried to justify the prices on old lamps and kitchen utensils. I wondered how I could crawl under the table when my mother-in-law huffed in offense as someone offered her a mere $2 for her $5 cat figurine. At the first opportunity I bolted to 'scour' the others tables, being alternately embarrassed by what they were trying to sell, and the fact I appeared to be a buyer!

All that changed when I got to a table covered in vases. Tall, short, colored, clear, small, cute, elegant...and cheap. For about $12 I picked up eight vases that would have cost me over $100 retail!! Do you know how much I could save when making flower arrangements, if I only spend $2 on the container?

I'm hooked!

(But I'm still not getting up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, or printing out routes...so don't try to make me!)