Random Acts of Nerdness: The Dark Confessions of a Thrifter

I think that at some point in everyone’s life, they have to confess their darkest secrets, no matter how twisted, perverted, and disgusting that secret may be. It is time that I, after so many years of hiding it from my friends and family, come clean and disclose my evil enigma, despite the risk of my peers looking down on me for my sick sin. Okay, here it goes: I love garage sales.

I don’t know what it is about them, but when a household decides that it’s time to throw away a bunch of their junk, but feel too guilty to leave it by the curb, a kind of magic is made. Instead, they organize it into little piles, slap a few price stickers on things, and fling open the garage door, an oil-scented flower spreading its thrifty aroma to attract to the bargain-hunting bees.

I blame my parents. My dad is a pack-rat by trade, only instead of collecting cool anime and video game paraphernalia, his place is brimming with various knick-knacks given to him by thoughtless gift givers, but this system saves me a lot of hassle.

My mother could also be to blame. She has a habit of buying more groceries than an Army platoon could hope to consume. She also enjoys over-buying odds and ends for the house, like cleaning products, which only accomplish the task of making the house messier. Of course, a majority of these non-essentials go to waste, but is usually explained with one of the two possible justifications:

1: “I want some [item name here] in the house for a change.”

2: “It’s on sale!”

Another thing she’ll buy a lot of is clothes. She’ll routinely bring home five identical-looking-to-me outfits every other week, adding to her wardrobe that she will likely never cycle through before her funeral, by that time I’ll have the agonizing task of picking out just the right outfit for the burial. I’ll likely screw up on this task and pick the wrong outfit, causing her to come back from the dead and strangle me. This is probably more of a female thing, since all women basically have enough clothes to outfit several Broadway show runs. Men can wear the same outfit for a week, by that time he is forced to change because no one, not even the flies, will get near him.

But I digress. While I was probably grabbing at straws by blaming my parents, which is in no way meant to pad out this article, I can confidently blame my garage sale fetish on environmentalists. How many of us have had the message of recycling and reusing and not wasting pounded into us when we were kids? I know I did, and now I can’t throw away a can of Spaghetti-Os without scraping every last noodle, even the inconsequential Spaghetti-O holes, into my bowl. Yep, the environmentalists screwed me up. Great job, Momma Nature's boys.

Because of my psychological scarring, whenever something of mine breaks down, I implore the ancient engineering technique of yelling at it and hitting it in the right place (blowing on it is acceptable if it’s a game cartridge). If somehow that doesn’t work, I go through what psychologists call “thrifter’s cognitive dissonance,” which has several stages. Let’s use an old computer that someone gave me and won’t turn on as an example:

1) I try to fix the computer myself, which usually ends up in worse off than when I started, with most of the screws lost and the modem broken in half.

2) I see if someone else can fix the computer. Because I lose interest, I never get around to actually dropping it off to the fixer, so we move to…

3) I look for someone to buy it, but I can’t find someone stupid enough to trade actual, spendable money for something that doesn’t work, which means I try to…

4) Trade something for it. Better not to walk away empty handed, right? I went through all the trouble of getting this item, so why shouldn’t I have my palms brushed with something? Usually, the item I get in trade, if it goes through, is something almost equally useless, or something I think I can make a quick buck on, but am just kidding myself. If this fails, I usually…

5) Try to give the item to someone, keeping in mind that this computer was something someone didn’t want in the first place, so if I can’t find a taker, I go to…

6) Drop it off at Goodwill. They take anything, and usually end up selling it to some other thrifter. But even Goodwill has its standards, so if they would rather not deal with an old computer and prefer a ceramic cow trinket with the nose chipped off as a marquee sales item, I move to the final step, where I…

7) Give up and throw the computer away. At the same time, Adolf Hitler and the Virgin Mary announce their wedding plans, with Elvis as the minister.

Basically, the computer will sit in my basement, where spiders will come and make an apartment out of it, including a tanning bed made from the processor. There’s nothing I can do with the computer at this point, except maybe move it from one part of the basement to the other (the spiders don’t mind; a change of scenery is nice every once in a while) until Judgment Day, when, if I’m lucky, the ensuring hellfire will disintegrate the computer into a biodegradable dust that will aid the surviving plants in growing again and starting a new cycle of life so humans can screw it all up again and have the Almighty torch us again and again, for all eternity, because of sociopaths like myself.

I’m really bad about scrapping, or picking up things people throw out, which I suspect is part of why garage sales appeal to me. If I’m driving down the road and see a computer lying by it, I’ll stop the car, rush out, popping the trunk on the way, grab the prize, toss it in back, and drive off, ninja-like. I’ll then spend the rest of the trip contemplating about the computer based on what little information I ascertained in time when I first spotted it to when I chucked it into the car and sped off. These thoughts are along the lines of “All right! It looks like a Pentium II!" or “Gee, I hope it works.” or “Hmm, I hope that case wasn’t housing a rattlesnake.”

I never use what I find, but I’m grateful that I’m not obsessed with picking up pizza boxes in hopes of finding leftovers in them. I’ve picked up computers, monitors, stereo receivers, things that may be useful to other people or me. I once picked up a metal shower rod. Hey, you have to have something to protect your vastly growing stash with.

I accept things from other people. My boss will unload his electronic garbage on me because he knows I’ll take it. I view this as a service to him, because now he doesn’t have to live with the guilt of throwing it away himself. I usually end up running through the previously mentioned list when I end up with a freebie, where I try to sell it, give it away, or donate it. I’ve actually made money, and some of the stuff I actually use, so not all bad comes from it. I still look like a deranged hobo, but all’s well that ends well.

Garage sales are the attractive cousin of scrapping; it’s more appealing, but there’s still something creepy about it by relation. I view garage sales as scrapping, but for things that people think are actually worth trying to sell and might just work. Most items are priced cheaply to begin with, and haggling is always a possibility (and essential for the haggler on a budget). If the prices are unacceptable, a garage sale snoot can turn his nose in the air, climb into his 1994 Ford Crown Victoria, turn on some J-Pop music, and speed off, mocking the sale holder’s lack of entrepreneurial expertise. It’s a big ego rush.

There’s a certain thrill of hunting for garage sales, not knowing what you’re going to find. I’m an avid collector of video games, old and new, and some of the more interesting finds coming from someone’s garage. And the prices can be wonderful. I once bargained a woman down on an Intellivision video game system with boxed games to ten dollars, a set that would probably be worth close to almost four times that today. Do I feel guilty for taking advantage of this woman? Nah, I was taking her garbage and paying her for it.

I’ve also gotten junk before at these sales, either by accident or on stupidity. Items that don’t work are always a risk, and it’s up to the seller whether or not to hand out a refund. They just got rid of the junk for money, and why should they take it back and pay you money for it? Other times, I’ll buy something really cheap, get home, and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

But there still is a certain magic to garage sales, but the problem is, they’re sporadic, and only occur during the summer. That’s why I’m thankful for used item shops and thrift stores. I’ll hardly ever buy anything new, but if I have the itch for a new video game, I duck into an Allied Record Exchange or a Gamestop and hope for the best. It’s a gamble and a little costly still, but it’s cheaper than hitting the retail stores. Trust me, managers do not like it when you hit their buildings.

While the thrill of the hunt is present at these places, they usually know what things are worth, so the prices are fairly unspectacular. That’s when I turn to thrift shops like Goodwill and Salvation Army, or a flea market. While it’s rare to find anything of use at these places, when something does come up, it’s usually pretty cheap, because the people running these places are, I’m being nice here, “decisively ignorant”.

I have a love-hate relationship with these places, though. A thrift shop is a place where people go to thrift, meaning that people who go there usually are there because they can’t afford any place else. When my suburbanite butt goes into one of these places, I feel like I real pack-rat, which isn’t really a good thing.

But I think that we need more pack-rats in higher positions. Think about it: do you really want your tax dollars going to someone who buys a new car every week because, what the heck, this one doesn’t have the new car smell anymore? No, you’re going to want the guy who’s driving the 1973 Gremlin with three missing hubcaps and an orange and rust paint job, because he sure as hell is going to know where every last cent of your money is going: into his gas tank so he can drive all over your city, looking for computer parts.

Call the police on him, because I want that damn computer.