The girls and I returned home from an outing yesterday and noticed a rather obvious, neon sign at the end of our street with a neighbour’s address written in bold, black Sharpie and an over-sized arrow.
We’re assuming the arrow was pointing to the house but was sort of redundant given the address was on the sign and unless we were traveling through a maze, it seemed rather straight forward.
I pulled into our driveway and my girls started screaming, “Why aren’t you driving to the house on the sign?!”
It hadn’t occurred to me to check things out given it was just a sign with an address and an arrow and no other visible clues letting us know why we should visit or avoid a visit at all costs depending on how you interpreted the vagueness of the message and the cryptic arrow.
Still, their curiosity had been piqued and I had very little else on my plate for the next three minutes so we reversed out of the driveway, took another look at the direction of the arrow and followed the clues to the house.
Garage sale.
Who would have thunk it?
I drove past slowly which is my garage sale technique, slinking in my seat in the mini-van, blasting 80’s rap, shades resting at the tip of my nose, scanning the rod with shirts on hangers behind a partially opened garage door like that was the VIP lounge at the boutique. I noticed a vase that looked like it would smash into a million pieces before we got it home, some sort of exercise equipment that appeared old but totally unused and a pair of saw horses that may or may not have been for sale.
We came home empty handed and mentioned to Greg there was a garage sale in the neighbourhood. He asked where, we told him there was an arrow he could use as a guide or perhaps reference the compass in one of the kitchen junk drawers.
I suggested he might be interested in a spare pair of saw horses. I don’t know why I suggest these things, he has a perfectly acceptable, totally unused pair of saw horses but it seemed like I was due to encourage some man-cave accessory shopping and something used was likely not going to break the bank.
Greg put on his finest garage sale trick outfit; bathing suit, visor, cheap sunglasses, Crocs (not to be confused with his Saturday best) and headed toward the deals.
While he did not return with the saw horses, he did have a handful of video games “for the kids.”
Titles included; Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader (cute we’ll try it), Kung Fu Panda (adorable movie, should be fun), a Nascar-esque game and oh right, “Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.”
I know–I didn’t know Kung Fu Panda had a video game.
So I gave him my angriest eyebrow and asked about Call of Duty.
He said, “It’s fine, it’s not for kids though.”
Um, so who did you buy this for? Are you an adult gamer? I wasn’t aware.
Oh right, isn’t this also the game I keep seeing on the CNN ticker being blamed for almost all of the mass murders in the world right now?
Greg said, “No, you’re thinking of some other game.”
No, I’m thinking of Call of Duty because as soon as I saw the cover it blinded me and I wanted to run out of the room. I don’t want this in the house.
Greg said he would hide it away in his office.
If you were planning to hide it away, why did you buy it at all?
Greg, “Because I wanted to round things out to $10 so I threw in an extra game.”
I guess coming home from a garage sale with change is bad luck.
“They didn’t have a shirt in the VIP boutique you could have used to paint in?”
I told him to follow the arrow back to the sale and leave a trail of Call of Duty if he got lost. I suggested he give it back to its rightful owner or throw it away but I didn’t want it.
He told me I was over-reacting.
As God as my witness! As God as my witness!
Okay, I may have said, “As God as my witness!” (twice) but this thing isn’t staying.
Look at what it’s already doing to me!
