Stuff and Nonsense

Stuff. People are in love with stuff. I'm a people too, so I gotta admit that I appreciate accumulating my share of stuff. I try not to love my stuff as much as some people do, but yeah ... mea culpa. (Just had to put that out there so you can see at the outset that I'm not being too holier than thou.)

But ... I was not one of the people thronging the sidewalk just outside my own door this morning.You see, our neighbourhood had its annual (sometimes semi-annual) garage sale today. Sheesh! You shoulda seen the crowd.

We live in townhouses, so there are lots of houses with stuff to pawn off. Even though half of the houses (like us) choose not to participate, half do, so garage-sale-devotees can still hit a lot of vendors in a short time. So ... yes ... they come by the busload (not really, but it sure seemed like it this morning).

When we slipped out in the early afternoon to run this errand and that, we found more garage sales all over town. A community sale here, a cancer marathon sale there, and many private sales here and there. Many.

All so people can get more stuff.

If I were to participate, I'd probably see stuff that I would like to have. So, I choose not to participate, 'cause I gots enough stuff, eh? Well, not really, but I try to be selective, and if I stay away from such events, I find that I can be. I mean to say, they don't sell my wants such as high tech stuff at garage sales anyway. I won't find my new camera there or a terrabyte hard drive or ... well, you get the idea. That's not really all that much stuff that I lust after though, so I think I'm sorta, kinda cool that way.

When the street sale ended at noon, I saw various neighbours putting their unsold stuff in the trunks of their cars (I wish we said boots like the clever Brits). After making whatever they could off sales, they would be taking the unwanted stuff to the local Goodwill (or equivalent) Dropoff. Cuppa and I prefer to do that first and just get the stuff out of the way and to heck with the garage sale pittance. It doesn't make us any better, but it does make us a bit different, I guess.

What is it about people and their stuff? We have more stuff than anybody at any time in history, but we keep wanting more. Why do we need and want so much stuff? Is it the only way many have of trying (in vain, no doubt) to fill ourselves up?

Stuff and nonsense, say I.

(Sincere apologies if you're a garage sale person. Some of my best friends ... etc. )