Selling Off My Soul

Piece by piece, bit by bit. One quarter here, one quarter there....

Yesterday I had my yard sale.

Emotionally, it was harder than I thought. As I lay out all my items for sale, I relived all my memories attached to them. T-shirts from concerts, dancewear I was still holding on to, shoes, old sports gear, knicknacks, souvenirs, and other stuff. I had so much clothes to sell, I could have dressed an entire other person! Some stuff was easier to say goodbye to, others were hard. I'll admit there were even some items I changed my mind about and had to take back.

Yes, the Star Trek uniform. I guess I'm just a total geek/nerd at heart. Maybe I'm just a Bajoran at heart. (^ ^) I also kept all my lead crystal and my Swarovski.

To make things more agonizing, I had to miss the prologue to the Tour de France. I'm not going to comment on it because there is so much drama surrounding it this year. There's a big doping scandal going on and some of the top contenders are suspended pending investigation. It's really sad.

Back to the yard sale. Some of my agony is the fact that I'm selling my stuff at less than their value. I'm not trying to make big bucks here, which is good, because I'm not. Yard sale shoppers are trying to make deals of the century so it's pretty much a buyers market. Here's a good example. Yesterday I sold my tennis racket. I bought it back somewhere between '94-'95. I paid $75 for it including carrying case, which was a really good deal. I think it was on clearance or something. I'm not a tennis player, so I had a (then) friend agree to teach me. She was a most unforgiving instructor. No patience whatsoever. We made it out to the court three times tops! After that, she refused to play tennis with me. I never touched my racket again.

I've held on to this racket all this time because I knew it was a good racket. Part of me thought that maybe I'd try again, under better and more encouraging circumstances. That time never came, so I allowed myself to let go of the racket. It was practically pristine. The purple strings were still in immaculate shape, as well as the pink tape that wrapped the handle.

I sold it for $2.00

The story I got from the buyer, was that he was a retired PE teacher teaching tennis at a local community youth center. He was short one racket. Because I need to, I believe him. The fact that he was on a bike, wearing bike shorts and a helmet made his story stonger. One of my helpers needed to remind me "Tia, at least it's being used!" Good point. What was I going to do with it? Put it back in the closet? At least someone will get to use it.

Man, I sound like I need Pack Rats Anonymous! Hi, my name is Yvette Z. and I'm a pack rat.

I didn't sell as much stuff as I had hoped, so my helpers and I came up with a plan to give it another shot next weekend at the new house. A different clientel, maybe a better outcome. We'll see.

Yvette Z.
The Collector

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