Goodwill R Us!

We are a second handing kind of family. In all the years I have been with my partner we have never shopped at a department store. Target doesn’t count, neither does Walmart or Fred Myers. We just like the bargains we find in the aisles of junk shops, thrift stores, flea markets, pawn shops, swap meets and consignment shops. Why pay retail when you can find perfectly reasonable goods at a much better price?

One things for certain is that all that second handing fills up basements and garages but that is a different story entirely. This story is just about one outing that we had recently. It was a good time, a way to unwind from a week. Some folks would not think that going to a hip urban center to hit up a fifty percent off sale on the weekend before Thanksgiving would be anything but restful, for those of us who tend to like their CBDs and a touch of tincture before lunch, well, a little dab will do ya.

What made the outing even more fun was taking my boy along with me. He and I hit up second hands and we are on different missions entirely. At first I could not get why the young dude was not hitting up the books, movies and toys with the same enthusiasm and interest as I had. But, once I tuned into my own personal history channel I got it: when I used to go to the swap meet with my mom I would be given the same treatment. What my mom dug on was completely different than what I was into. It took years for her to get that I wasn’t into carnival glass and ceramic dolls. She was and that was cool. Me, I would go after Marx toy soldiers, comic books and just plain old weird shit. 

Whatever floats your boat.

So this day it was really about that boat floating stuff. The aisles were packed with bargain shoppers. Every time a new cart would come out of the back sorting room it was pandemonium. Folks hit those bins like locusts. The boy and I did our rounds. I cruised the electronics, the books and the cds, he tagged along with me, doing his best to look interested and to read titles on movies the best he could. 

My dear was around the corner getting her hair fixed, so we had the time, until she got there, to ourselves. But after a while the noise was just a bit too much, even with subtle waves of cannabis bliss cruising through my system. It was time for a time out so we wandered over to the furniture section and grabbed two identical wingback chairs. By that time he found an M&M one armed bandit and I had a stack of prints to mull over. The shoppers wove their way around us as we sat there. I felt as if we had turned into a large rock in a fast moving stream. We sat there, the boy engrossed in his future winnings, I with my art, all sedated, happy and eager for the arrival of the good mother.

I loved what I came away with that day: six movies, four cds, a nice Northwest watercolor, a strange arsty thermometer, two bedroom lamps and an African carving. The boy scored a brand new snap on cover for his Ipad. The mujuer scored clothes and gosh, what else? Oh so much. Once again we left with filled up bags of stuff that we “needed”. Well, we needed the lamps. The light in the bedroom was killing my eyes.

So, the moral of this story? Buy second hand, get good deals, forego the mark-ups of retail. And if you should ever decide to do that kind of shopping on half-off days, go medicated.  It’s one hell of a lot easier on the brain, the heart and the soul. Plus, wow, it was just so much fun checking out all those strange things stoned!

Salud!