Being Officially Orthodox and Very Bratty, All in the Same Weekend

Tomorrow we are jumping through the necessary hoops to officially become Orthodox. It's a little surreal, accepting that the journey we've been on for quite some time now is in some ways ending and in so many others just starting. I'm getting this post together late on Saturday, so likely by the time many of you read this, we'll already be members of the Orthodox Church. Weird, to say the least. And for some reason, I feel something akin to stage fright. Which really is very stupid. We have a small church, and I don't have to do much besides stand there, soak in the words that are being said (words that have been said for centuries), say the Nicene Creed, and help keep my hooligans in line.

Hmm. Maybe I should have stage fright after all.

Anyway, we're excited. I'm going to paint my nails for the occasion. Of course, I never have time to slap on anything other than clear, but still. This is a serious moment in my life, folks. Methinks it calls for some polish.

____________________

On a completely unrelated note, today I got in a minor argument with two ladies who were hosting a garage sale.

Ahem. Let me explain.

I frequent garage sales quite regularly. I aspire to be as dedicated as Raechel, but that will take time. I do have some very distinct opinions (What, me have distinct opinions? Noooo.) about garage sales, prime among them being Cardinal Garage Sale Rule #1: "Garage sales are not about making money. They are about getting rid of stuff."

Really, that's what it comes down to. If you're hosting a garage sale, expect to make, at most, 10% of what you originally paid for an item. You're lucky if you even make that. If you want to make money, don't host a garage sale. Do something else with your items, something that will help you actually make some serious money. Consign it, put it on eBay, but don't host a garage sale.

When I visit sales, I come with a general list in my head of items that would be nice to have. I never have my heart set on having anything in particular; therefore, I'm never disappointed and I'm always happy with my often meager purchases. In addition, I never go to a sale and let myself fall hopelessly in love with anything (with a few exceptions, of course.) That way, if the person hosting the sale doesn't want to come down in price, then I can simply set it down and walk away, not having wasted my money on something that is, for a garage sale, too expensive.

Steve has quoted a friend as having said something along the lines of, "If someone touches an item, it's theirs, whatever it takes." If that means that you, as the host, have to come down wildly in price, then that's what happens. It's a sale. You are there to get rid of your junk, not to showcase your fabulously fantastic high-end merchandise and refuse flex in price.

Sorry. I'm get a little riled up when it comes to yard sales. Some people get the point of them; others don't.

Well, today I visited one hosted by two ladies who were very proud of the stuff they were selling. Two daughters and their mother had put together a sale of very nice, high-end baby and kid clothing and toys, with some expensive label maternity clothing, too. They had paid a lot of money for this stuff brand-new, and it probably bothered them to see perfect strangers pawing through the clothes that their children had worn as newborns, asking if they could possibly take $1 instead of $5 for a baby outfit. Those outfits had come from Janie and Jack, for heaven's sake! And look: this label says "Ralph Lauren." That's a really nice company.

(They were really saying things like that.)

I should have known my efforts would end in failure when they refused to come down any for two ladies in line ahead of me. Still, I tried.

Me: "How much for this dress?" [I hold up a nice, black Mimi Maternity dress. It looked something like this one, although off by a couple seasons. Who pays $128 for a dress you will wear for a few months? And before you get all excited, I'm not pregnant. But I plan to be sometime in the future, and this dress was worth having on hand.]

Lady #1: "Um...let me ask." [Consults sister.]

Sister: "Oh, that's a really nice label. $5."

Me: "Would you take $2?"

Sister: "No, I couldn't. $5."

Me: "Okay. No thanks." [I told you, I'm cheap. Maybe too cheap. You be the judge.]

Me again: "Okay, this one doesn't have a price on it." [I hold up a baby girl's Ralph Lauren romper.]

Lady #1: "Oooo, that's a Ralph Lauren. $1."

Me: "Would you take $.50?" [I proceed to hold out two quarters to her.]

Lady #1: "No."

That's how it went. Seriously. These women had three tables piled high with beautiful baby clothing they were never going to use again. They had racks of maternity clothing from really nice places, and they were never going to get pregnant again. They were entering the final hour of the last day of their garage sale, and they refused to dicker in price with me. I thanked the lady and set the romper down. Then something got into me, and I pushed the issue. Perhaps I should have just shut up at this point. That would have been the passive, polite thing to do. But I was getting angry with these silly women who were doing the same thing to another customer. They were going to be stuck with this clothing. They were asking really high prices in our lower middle-class neighborhood, and it just wasn't working. So I got feisty.

Me: "What are you going to do with these clothes if they don't sell? Donate them?"

Lady #2: "Yes. We are members of Asbury."

Okay, obviously she missed the point. I wasn't making sure she was a good Christian who clothes the needy; I was trying to point out that anything that didn't sell would slip out of her hands having failed to earn one red cent on her behalf. She was willing to accept that everything might be donated with no profit on her part, but she wasn't willing to come down in price and at least make something. 

I still couldn't shut up. I wish I would have just turned around, because I feel kind of embarrassed about it now. But I kept on.

Me: "Okay. So why aren't you willing to come down in price? Everything you don't sell will just be donated." [I start to walk away.]

Lady #1 to Lady #2, loudly so I can hear it: "Geez. These are really nice things! Why do people like that even come to garage sales?"

At this point I turned around and said, "Look, you're going to have to be willing to dicker, no matter how nice it is."

And she said, "We are dickering!"

Well. Perhaps she is unfamiliar with the definition of "dicker." But last time I checked, saying, "No. I want the full price." is the very opposite of dickering. These ladies were so hung up on their fancy labels that they couldn't bend, and they were left with nearly all of the same amount of stuff they had started out the weekend with.

Maybe you think I was being cheap and unreasonable and immature. That's fair. I was, in some ways. But I was also being a garage sale shopper, and that is a ruthless and cheap breed of people who will bargain you under the table.

Really, I think a big part of the problem was their obsession with labels. It was really important that I, lowly garage salee, understand that their clothes were superior to the average person's clothes, and by golly, I was going to pay for that superiority. Does anyone else remember absolutely having to own a pair of Doc Martens? They were popular for me in late junior high and early high school (they were a long-lasting fad, for all that), and by the time it was said and done, I had managed to accumulate 4 pairs of them, two boots and two sandals. I don't even want to think what kind of money I put into those ridiculous shoes. Suffice to say, the desire to wear certain labels, for the most part, disappeared when I entered college and found myself rejoicing at the wealth of a 20 dollar bill. I was (relatively) poor, and the importance of things like clothing labels almost totally disappeared.

Now I understand buying nice clothing--you get what you pay for. But for heaven's sake, does it matter if our children are wearing Ralph Lauren or Wal-Mart brand clothing? Or if we spend over $100 for a maternity dress? In the end, we're clothed, and we're clothed many times over, which is far more than the majority of the world can say. I hope I've gotten beyond that problem, and I allowed myself to feel superior to the ladies at the garage sale who hadn't yet embraced my way of thinking. (Shame on me. Shame on them.)

Okay, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. It was really bothering me. I'll try to shut up the next time I visit a sale hosted by this variety of people.

Just for the record, that dress was super cute, and I almost, almost regret being so bratty about it. I contemplated sending my husband back for it, but that would have been underhanded and suspicious. Sigh.