make_it_stop
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: footsie
I grew up being a hoarder and at my parents' place my bedroom is still chock-a-block with stuff I must toss out. -- David Wenham, In Style magazine


So, after 23 years in the same house, my mom got remarried recently (to my dad) (very long story) and is moving to warmer climes. That means hauling tons of junk out of the crawl space in my old bedroom, and deciding what to do with it. Old T-shirts. Bad art. A milk crate full of vinyl LPs. The wooden leg I wore as Long John Silver in our school play. (arr!) It's appalling, the rate at which stuff accumulates.

The records got put out for sale at my mom's yard sale, in the hellish 97-degree oven of our driveway, where they could bake to a fine warp under the June sun. I figured there wouldn't be many takers, so I priced them at 5 for $1. Come to find out, there are a LOT of people who collect "vinyl" now. Apparently, it's all the rage among teenagers. At 9 am sharp, the bargain hunters descended like locusts and began elbowing each other out of the way, fighting to get at the crate.

Having not gone through the records first, I discovered afterwards that I had been sitting on a veritable treasure hoard: The Traveling Wilburies Volume 1 (worth $40 on eBay). Dr. Demento's Greatest Hits ($20). A rare Frank Zappa album that would have fetched $100 on the open market. My mom's neighbor's dog-sitter snapped them up for 60 cents, with a wild glint in her eye.

Oh well. I look at it this way: the records weren't worth anything to me. They were just sitting there in the crawl space, neglected and quietly gathering dust. How often do you get a chance to make someone insanely happy for 60 cents?