The "So what do you do with your old stuff?" Story

It was an ordinary day. The traffic was heavy in the neighborhood. It was the annual garage sale day in Foxshire. About half of the houses in the development participated in the sale. We chose not to. Did one time and sold a few items, but who wants to buy my junk? I ended putting most of it in the trash can after the sale was over. Crazy to sit in the driveway in the heat and hope to sell $20 worth of useless stuff. If the stuff is any good, I'll keep it for myself. We have a neighbor who runs a shoe and clothing store and every year he would greatly reduce some of the stuff that he sold in his store and put it out for the garage sale. I even bought some things from him at his house. Then, someone complained that he was selling and not charging tax for items that he sold in his store and someone told him he had to stop with the store products. About 15 years ago, when we decided to move from our home on Janet Ave. to our current home, we started to pack for the move. Unbelievable what you can accumulate in 29 years of living in one spot. And we even had a detachedgarage with stuff in it. Started to put stuff out every day for the trash man. We had an alley running behind our house and our trash man would come through the alley on trash day, so all I had to do was place the trash in bags and cans in the alley at anytime during the week, and it would be gone on Monday evening. We threw out everything we didn't need for the new house. Old tools, sports equipment, silverware, dishes, clothes, and even trinkets we had accumulated from over 30 years of marriage and 3 kids. Then, about two weeks before we moved, the neighborhood had a gigantic yard sale. Carol and I decided to walk up and down the streets of the neighborhood that day looking at all the junk and saying our good-byes to all our old neighbors. Finally, we walked down the street behind our house. My best friend Wayne lived on the street along with our backyard neighbors, the Nguyens. Their daughter, Pauline and our son Derek were good friends in high school. When we got to their house we noticed they had a huge amount of stuff for sale. We started to look through the items and all of a sudden Carol said, "That's my old silverware ..... and those mugs over there we threw out a couple of weeks ago." Yep! Our neighbors checked our trash throughout the week as we threw all our unwanted items out and were now selling them at their garage sale. I said to Carol, "That's OK. No one is buying the stuff from them anyway. Makes me feel better that they can't sell them either, since it saved me from having to put out all that stuff this morning in this heat and sitting next to it for 8 hours. Now it will be in the alley again for trash day!" We learned that when you get tired of something that you have had for ages, give it to your children or friends and if they don't want it, throw it out. Probably no one else will want it either. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.