Green Garage Sale Blues

Do not take this woman's financial advice.

I arrived all bright eyed and bushy tailed at the Green Party Garage sale just before 8 a.m. on Saturday. I off-loaded a few things from the spy car and presented myself to my betters.

"Here to help!" I announced, proud to be finally contributing some of my time.

"Good, you can stand over there," She motioned in the general direction of a table that was piled high with a collection of medieval torture devices.

"Wow!" I thought as I slid behind the table. "Here's the actual instrument the Inquisition used to rip fingernails off the Satan worshippers." I looked at the small metal contraption with interest.

Luckily before I could stick one of my own fingers into the thing to see if it still worked I was distracted by a pair of garage sale shoppers.

One lady picked up a brown mug that came with two plates and a bowl.

"How much?" she asked.

We both spotted the $12 price tag at the same time.

Now I don't know about you, but when I think garage sale I don't think dollars, I think cents. I actually thought that was the whole point.

"Oh ignore that price!" I said reassuringly to the rather shabbily clad woman. I'll sell it to you for a quarter.

"And the plates and bowl?"

I ignored those price tags too. "Oh give me a dollar for the whole bunch."  I was beginning to feel just like Mother Theresa - doing good among the leprous poor of Beamsville.

Her pal picked up a solitary blue mug.

"You can have that for a dime," I said happily, peeling off the original price tag. I was really getting into this garage sale thing.

As a matter of fact I was so into it I didn't notice the two Green Party Members who descended on me the way the RCMP Swat team descended on the nudists at the 'Naked People Against BP' protest march in Toronto last week.

Turned out the prices were real and the ladies I thought were homeless bag ladies knew exactly what they were doing.

I made it to the end of the sale but as I pulled away in the spy car I think I saw them taking up a collection to bribe the NDP to take me back.

And that Medieval torture device? I remembered to ask before I left.

Pasta maker.

Jeesh!  I gotta get out more.