You Call This a Yard Sale?

Are these bent wire hangers? What abandoned appliance did these cords belong to? This Tupperware doesn't even have a lid. Is this some sort of joke? Because I swore the purpose of a yard sale was to sell stuff people might want. But what you've amassed is something different. Something special. It's like I'm wandering through your highly curated collection of thrift store rejections. I mean, I cannot believe these shirts are still in America. If I saw a picture of a malnourished child in Yemen wrapped in these, I wouldn't blink an eye. And yet here you are, wanting five dollars.

You got stuff a full-blown hoarder would pass on. He'd look at his Geo Metro and its literal overflowing mass of Styrofoam and old TVGuides and say to himself, "Naw. I think I saw some waterlogged cardboard I'd rather sleep on tonight." When you walked past the Burger King and hung your inkjet sign between the WORK FROM HOME!!! and CHEAP MATRESS SET CALL NOW did you really think you were doing the world a favor? Your crap is nothing but a health risk to the raccoons that tunnel beneath it and your VHS collection is in shambles. This copy of Independence Day doesn't even have the hologram cover. It isn't even rewound.

And now you got every curious person in town rummaging through, confused out of their minds. They want bargains, you give them bedbugs. You call it a yard sale, the city calls it an "offsite dump." But, then again, it's pretty clear that you've never been one to sweat the details, though based on the musk from the box of polyester pants, you do sweat. A lot.

Looking at the objects you've set out to sell, I worry about your comprehension of society, of your perverted image of domesticity. You must design your house like a bird, caring more about mud, twine, and shiny objects than functionality. A wall of broken televisions, a room of dusty Christmas albums, denim.

It's garbage, and yet you won't stop watching me. As if my flipping through your heavily thumbed romance paperbacks means I might walk off with a copy of Fleshy Prelude or My Captain's Hard Log. I wish it was that easy, but I'm not the thief. You are. I could be doing thousands of better things with the time you've stolen from me. Freebasing in an abandoned warehouse or shattering my ribcage with a hammer, just to name a few. Your possessions are best viewed at 45mph, but I walk table to table until I find one object, one pathetic piece of junk to make it worth my time. Even though I wish there was an endless reel of Vietnam War footage I could gaze upon for eternity instead of looking for another second at your yellowed computer speakers and assortment of Precious Moment figurines, I stay.

Just tell me one thing. Is this WWE shirt vintage? Wal-Mart circa 2004? Nice touch with the bleach stain. Lots of offers today? No? That's a surprise. Me? Not interested. Sorry. I still have the capacity to use my senses. But, and I promise this, as soon as my eyes are gouged out with shish kabob sticks and my nose is ripped from my skull, I'll be right back to pick this up. Because if the festering face wounds don't get me some pity as I beg for loose change maybe this shirt will.

Oh, and for the record, when you leave your crappy little sign up on the corner for weeks after your sale, don't be surprised when I throw a brick through your front door at 4am on a Tuesday looking for your baby clothes and mismatched socks.

– Ian "Salmon Season" Golding (@iggolding)