Life as a Guppie

My neighbors had a yard sale over the weekend and actually made money. They are business people with thick-skins and tough-spines who also happen to be fun to go to dinner with and will do the carpool for you when you are in a bind.

I have banned myself from having yard sales because I am of the lily-livered, weak spined-kind. My husband is just as weak, maybe weaker except he is taller and can count the money we don't make better than I can because he is of the accounting kind.

In our old neighborhood our neighbors had a sale and we decided we would set out our entertainment center. As we were hoisting the thing up the stairs subconsciously working on my husband's upcoming hernia, we made a solemn pledge not to take less than $100.00. We had bought it within the last year for $300.00 and it was in great shape.

We were dragging it onto the porch when a "garage sailor" (these are people of the sail-around-on-Saturdays-from-yard-to-yard-looking-for-an-easy-kill-kind) slyly sneaks up on us and says, "I'll give you $50.00 for that. My husband and I look at each other. For some reason we are frozen, unable to speak, like deer in the headlights. We both weakly nod and my husband squeaks out an, "Okay." The shark moves in closer and asks, "Can you deliver it to my house?" We both nod, wondering how this all went so wrong.

We end up delivering the entertainment center to the guy, picking up pizza for him on the way there and dropping off his dry cleaning when we leave. Then we go home and sit in front of our t.v. which is sitting on the floor and pinky-swear that we will never attempt to sell anything again because we are just a couple of guppies.