A Shitty Garage Sale That Almost Destroyed Our Faith In Human Nature

Have you ever run a garage sale?

If so, you may relate to this story.

There again, if you have lots of experience with such sales, you may deduce that my husband and I are perfect fruit loops, which I think may be close to the truth.

So, what started all this?

We’d just sold our home, and with that, a fair amount of our furniture. But, as with most of us, we had lots of great stuff left, much of it expensive – however, we still needed to get rid of it.

A friend suggested a garage sale.

Please note, she’s no longer a friend!

Was joking about that, but just let me say, I will never, ever have a GS again.

So clearly, given the tone of my introduction, you’d already be intuiting that we know nothing about garage sales.

Correct! Though now we have painfully acquired some awareness.

Rookies we were, and any information we have gleaned in having our first/last, is of no use to us. We will never have another.

If ever there was a clear case of having our souls ripped apart, it happened on that day and we were left utterly bereft.

It’s not that we were disorganized!

My husband is a mathematician and if anyone is organized, he is!

Just ask the tradie who left us a 3 cubic metre skip, how he, my husband, managed to insert five of the said cubic metres into the same space. It was impressive.

I’m considering hiring him out

So, we’d spent the most part of two weeks getting things ready, putting prices on things, and making sure people could easily get in and out of our driveway.

Most people are kind…most! We found that out on the day.

Some insisted on giving us more than we asked, and that warmed our hearts.

Some quality items didn’t sell, though, and we soon found out why…

At the end of the two hours, when everyone had departed, my husband wondered why many of his quality tool kits had not sold.

When he checked, some pieces of the kits had been pilfered, so were no longer complete ‘kits’. We can only imagine whoever snaffled them was missing parts from theirs.

That was devastating for us. Anyone who knows my husband also knows that he’s meticulous about looking after things.

But, it was what it was. No going back in time.

Then, serendipity stepped in…

We were exhausted, somewhat deflated, and about to close up shop when a woman, her son, and her mother-in-law arrived.

The mother explained that her son, a student, was moving into his first share-house and just needed a few things. Did we have anything left?

This young man was the type of son we all dream of, polite, enthusiastic, and wanting to do the right thing.

I gave him lots of kitchen utensils, a food mixer, can-opener, coffee percolator, and such stuff, telling him that I couldn’t charge him for anything as I had used them forever and who knows, they could die tomorrow.

So needless to say he went off happily with enough kitchen equipment to start his own restaurant.

His grandma, who’d just arrived from Tasmania, fell in love with, and purchased a dresser, his mother a few pieces of furniture, plus some unworn dresses for her daughter.

So eventually we said goodbye to them, and sat down with a cool, comforting beer. This was an exercise never to be repeated!

And then, the icing…

Shortly after, and quite unexpectedly, there was a knock on our door.

There, smiling widely, was this same delightful trio, laden with bottles of wine and chocolates, because…they felt guilty!

They felt guilty because we’d charged so little for everything.

We very well may have, but that didn’t particularly matter to us at the time.

But what did matter, is that they cared enough to find a way to repay us in kind. Now, that really di mean so much to us.

Happy (kinda) ending

Our world is full of so many different types, those who get as much as they can for as little as possible, those who do a fair deal, and those who, in one simple act, restore our faith in human nature.

I wonder. Will our trio ever know?