'Tis The SZN For A Garage Sale

It's May, folks. If you're keeping track, that's the fifth month of the year.

And now that the weather is somewhat decent, it's time to move the cars, crank open the garage door and have a good ol' fashioned garage sale.

In all honesty, I'm not a huge garage sale fan because they kind of suck whichever side of the garage-retail equation you happen to find yourself on.

Sure, I enjoy a deal and I like making a little extra scratch, but there are other ways to do that aside from letting strangers root through your old belongings.

I find the whole thing too personal. If you go to a thrift store, those clothes previously belonged to someone else, but they're not actually in the store with you, standing over your shoulder while you peruse.

I don't like the idea of people going through my stuff. I'm pretty judgmental. When I go to a garage sale, I critique things like DVD collections.

"They actually spent money to own Disney's John Carter?!?!?! They have TWO copies of Battleship?!? WTF!?!?!"

I assume people are doing that to me too, so I just avoid it by keeping the garage door shut, and hoarding all of my belongings the way a sane person with dignity would.

It's weird going through the things that people gave each other as gifts, created memories with, and loved, and then pillaging everything and trying to fleece the previous owner by cutting a deal.

"Yo, I'll give you a quarter for the Ninja Turtles lunch box, but throw in that box of weird smelling books."

The haggling is another thing that bugs me with garage sales. It's not something we do much here in the U.S. of A. You can't walk in the grocery store and start arguing with the cashier about the price of your bananas, but when the transactions are going on where someone parks their car, it turns into a Bangladesh marketplace.

"It says $10 for that mountain bike that cost $300 brand new, but there's a scuff where someone slipped off the seats and banged their sack on the frame. Can you give me a break and go a little lower?"

No! You're in my garage, buying my garbage. You get no more breaks! Clearly you don't know what to do when handed a break!

Most garage sale patrons are upstanding (albeit cheap) people, but occasionally you still get some of the dregs.

The aforementioned judgmental looky-loos (like myself), the lady who keeps asking for the price of things in your garage that aren't for sale, and, of course, the creepy old guy from down the street who, for some reason, is leaving the premises with a pile of you sister's spent gym-shorts that he copped for $3.

But aside from all of that, I have no other issues with garage sales.