All the Good Stuff Will Be Gone

Folks have their garage sales on Fridays AND Saturdays around here, which means you gotta go on Friday because by Saturday “all the good stuff will be gone.” 

I cannot tell you how much those words make me think of my grandparents.

My grandfather would say “all the good stuff will be gone” in reference to getting to Dunkin Donuts at the crack of dawn.  Growing up, each summer, my family went to Lake Edinboro, a small little vacation resort – and using the word resort is really stretching it; we would stay in a lakeside cottage all together, all 20 or so of us:  grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins….  We smooshed into about 800 square feet to relish a week of playing board games for money; swimming in seaweed, and eating a multitude of donuts.  The water was so gooey and thick with bacteria that my mom would actually give us antibiotics going INTO the week of vacation, antibiotics she stockpiled by never finishing anyone’s prescription during the year.  You can thank us for antibiotics not working anymore.

Anyway, donuts…the go-getters up first each morning went to Dunkin Donuts.  We needed two dozen per day.  If you slept in, you were going to get stuck eating the dry cake variety.  Sorry – the glazed went first.  It paid to get your butt out of bed.  It paid donuts.  My grandfather, each morning before the sun came up from behind the lake, cheered on the go-getters, hurrying them out the door…over to the donut store, “all the good stuff will be gone.”  I can remember him saying, “Don’t worry about your hair.”  This meant you needed to put your vanity aside and get some éclairs.

This explains my present love for donuts a bit.  I can buy a dozen now –and I get to pick first.  I get up first.  I pick white icing with coconut.  Hallelujah.

Back to my childhood…there was the thrift store in the next town over.  Every Tuesday, it was “half-price for seniors.”  Good goggily moggily – grab you a grandma and head on out.  My grandmother was our token senior…that poor woman.  We didn’t care if she had bronchitis or a bunion the size of a peach.  She had no choice but to go.  We showed up at her house and abducted her so she could “buy” our thrift store finds.  On half-price senior citizen day, the doors of “The Thrift” opened at 9 am, and there would be polyester pointy collars lined up down the sidewalk.  Each of them talking daintily and appropriately to the collar in front of them. The air was rife with old-school Estee Lauder perfumes.

The issue on Tuesdays at the Thrift was shopping carts.  There were only so many – there were only about 20 carts total.  If you did not get over to the store at the crack of dawn and get to the front of that line, you weren't going to have a cart to push around the store, and if you know anything about thrifting during a half-off sale, you know you need a cart because you are just grabbing and stuffing…figuring it out later.  You cannot grab and stuff cartless.  Not only were there only a certain number of carts, but there were carts with bum wheels, rusty sides, and carts capable of making terrible screeching noises.  There were only a few GOOD carts.  My grandparents were aware of this situation.  My grandmother, on Monday night, would sigh, “Well, you better pick me up early or – all the good stuff will be gone.”  And we would get her early, and we would get the most aerodynamic, most stealth cart imaginable – it was almost like it wasn't really there, that cart. We were thrift store ninjas. 

We also attacked garage sales. 

This explains my present love for garage sales and thrifts stores a bit.

Well, with all that love, with all those memories of good times…good times…, I created, with and for my children, a weekly escapade that we have dubbed, “Donuts, Garage Sales, Playground.”  You have to sing that actually – like one would sing something in a conga line.  Now, picture my kids…in a conga line, singing, “Donuts, Garage Sale, Play-GROUND….Donuts, Garage Sales, PlayGROUND.”  Yes.  Okay.  You've got the image down.  So, we do this – every Friday morning.  I wake them with these words, “All the good stuff will be gone,” and they have like 5 minutes to conga out the front door (seriously), armed with quarters earned during the week (the children…not me – I do nothing during the week that earns me quarters).  We pile into the car, and 25 minutes later, we pull out of the driveway.

We are off.  I am reliving my childhood.  So that we can maintain historical accuracy, no one has combed their hair.  We head to the donut shop.  I send Peeved in.  She has instructions that I no longer have to speak.  They are memorized.  They involve types of donuts needed.  She has never failed me since that…ONE fateful morning, which is too painful to recount, but – let’s just say – there were cake donuts involved.

She comes out of the store, she gives me the change because my palm is immediately extended, and she distributes the donuts appropriately.  There are no noises in the car; no need to screech out your donut requests because this exercise has been completed enough times that we have finally dispelled the fear that there will not be enough donuts for everyone.  Silently, they extend their hands, and two donuts per child are planted in palms.  It is magic.

We continue on to our garage sales.  We start, strategically, at the ones closest to the donut shop.  We pull up to the garage, I look over.  I see if it is a “grown up garage sale” or a “kid garage sale.”  A grown up garage sale has GLASS.  We do NOT let kids out of minivan if there is GLASS, especially glass displayed on plywood held up by milk crates.  There is nothing at a grown up garage sale that you need so badly that it is worth sawing 3 years off your life – because that is exactly how much stress damage your heart will endure if you open that minivan door…3-years worth. 

We drive on to kid garage sales, where there are lots of stuffed animals.  You can see the stuffed animals as you drive up – they are piled high and dusty and cheap.  This is your signal.  Unload.  The doors open to the minivan, and I don’t watch the blast of bodies.  It is too overwhelming.  I watched a few times, and I can only equate it to having a bunch of pigeons cooped up in the back of my van – hundreds of them, and I open the door, and the pigeons are flying out in every direction, disoriented, frightened, smashing into each other – feathers are flying. 

I simply grab my wallet, very dignified, and I walk around to get the stroller from the back.  I make sure my facial muscles are relaxed, to convince the onlookers that “all is well…all is well.” 

Each kid spends his or her quarters independent of me.  I reserve the right to find and covertly destroy any purchases once home; but I do not make a scene at the garage sale.  My kids wheel and deal on their own.  Remember, I am dignified, pushing a stroller, “Yes…yes…she is only two months old…yes…yes…almost sleeping through the night…yes…yes...”  My kids get their stuff and head back to the van.  When the last kid is in the van, my time is up – I've got all I’m getting.

After about five sales, when all the quarters are gone, we head to a playground to run out the sugar and to lose a few of the stuffed animals.

Now…this sounds all well-thought out…maybe even exquisite.  Yes.  It has been tweaked to perfection.  It is as good as it can get.  All personalities have been considered in putting together this weekly event…

But.

Except.

One personality continues to elude us.

This past Friday, we were at a garage sale.  Tables were stacked high with primary colored Fisher Price junk.  It was like a beacon of bliss waving us in.  We drove up…flew out…attacked. 

Shirtless went missing.  I went around the front of the house to find him.  He was playing with a little boy, and I convinced them to come around to the garage to pick out a toy or two.  I had them.  They disappeared again.  I went back around the front of the house, and Shirtless had a yard stake…you know the kind that says something like, “Welcome.”  Yes.  Shirtless was using Welcome to push his prisoner (his friend of three minutes) into a dungeon (behind a bush).  I asked Shirtless to put down the pole (I called it a pole) and to come pick out a toy.  Shirtless dropped the yard stake.  I said, “Now, where does that go?”  Shirtless didn't make eye contact with me, which means he is temporarily deaf - and barring a gigantic scene - he will remain deaf for the next 5 minutes.  It is a very transitory condition.  He goes to the toys.  I go to the clothes.  I look up.  Gone.  All the other kids are in the minivan, quarterless.  Baby Child starts to scream her sweet little baby head off.  I find Shirtless, “Let’s go.”  He has befriended the grandmother of the prisoner, who is asking Shirtless to emancipate her grandson.  Shirtless isn't speaking to her.  He is grinning at her…a toothless grin, with a slight head tilt.  She is asking in a sweet voice, and Shirtless finds this alluring.  He is going to let her go on for a bit.  I come up from behind Shirtless and jack him up in a wrestling hold – one arm through his legs; the other arm around his shoulder.  I kiss his cheek.  I am going to chuck him in the van like a sack of potatoes, drive away, and get around the corner, out of the eyeshot or earshot of our audience, and then I will buckle him in after he is done thrashing about.

Grandma doesn't understand what is happening.  She doesn't know the drill.  She follows behind us calling, “He didn't get a toy.  He didn't get a toy.”  Shirtless is reaching his hand back toward the grandma, all “Save me….save me little woman of sweet voice and gray hair.”  I chuck him in.  Grandma is standing next to my van, bewildered.  I am thinking, in my most Christian inner voice, “Beat it, Granny.”

The doors to my minivan have motion sensors, and they will open if you stick a limb in the way.  Shirtless knows this.  I get the door almost closed.  Shirtless sticks his leg out.  I get the door almost closed again…Shirtless sticks his leg out.  I get the door almost closed again…Shirtless sticks his leg out.  This goes on for a while.

Let us not forget – the baby is screaming her head off.

Grandma is watching. 

Three years…just sawed off my life.

I get out of the van.  You reach a point in every interaction when you forget others are watching.

Shirtless is put in his seat belt.

It wasn't pretty.  It wasn't textbook.  Grandma is scarred for life.

We drove away.  I started breathing again about a mile down the road.

And, we went to a playground.

At the playground, sitting on a bench, nursing my baby, I reminded myself, these days of creating “interesting” memories with my children are fleeting.  One day, I won’t have to hog tie Shirtless.  One day, they won’t want to conga out the door to Donuts, Garage Sales, Playground.  One day, it will be a memory for them, just like Dunkin Donuts and Senior Citizen Tuesday are now a memory for me.

Someday, all the good stuff will be gone.

And I looked up to see Shirtless picking a flower for Pixie and hugging her.