Stop Touching Things

"Miss! you can't touch the artwork..."
"He means you, too, G-ma"
"Bahhhh"

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Nobody wants to learn German

This last weekend was a beautiful, near perfect weekend. The temp was in the the seventies, there was a slight breeze, the sun was shining, and it was the city wide garage sale day.

Considering the amount of windmills wind turbines in this area, a 'slight breeze' is something to be rejoiced by the townies out to enjoy their weekend. I haven't canoed in 4 years because the wind never blows below my arm strength on a nice day. Anywho. I digress. It was a near perfect weekend.

In fact, I was one of the fools trying to sell my stuff on my driveway. I grew up in a garage saleing family. We didn't go to yard sales, rummage sales, or jumble sales. No we went garage saleing. If we went with The G-Ma, we were there half an hour before the sale opened knocking on the garage door seeing if they would be opening early so we could get first pick. Maybe when I reach my mid sixties, I won't be totally mortified by this behavior, but then as now I hung my head below the car window until 9 am when all the sales were guaranteed to be open and hopefully no one would recognize us as the early knockers.

The acting Mayor of Ingvaldia is a supreme garage saler. At 38, she hasn't reached "early knocker' stage, nor has she started mapping her routes like the Queen Mother of the Mental State of Hilarity, my mother. However, she does visit several surrounding cities on their city-wide days and brings home quite the haul.

Czarina Kylie garage sales out of necessity. She looks for things that would make her family life easier... like the kid kart for the back of her bike, that any normal person couldn't reasonably afford brand new, but it quite a deal on the asphalt of the car park.

I, on the other hand, love to HAVE garage sales. I love sitting outside in the sun chatting with my sister or friends. I love the hustle and bustle of getting rid of stuff and getting quarters in return. The problem is, I don't own that much stuff in the first place (though the boxes of crap I have in storage are trying to prove otherwise) and the stuff I do have, isn't really sellable. Unless you want someone you don't know's 30 year old drawing from preschool... not quite the same affect as your own child's artwork.

This year is the third year in a row that I didn't have a dang thing to sell and had to convince friends and family to participate. I was in luck because Megan had just moved into her new house (yay!) and had lots to sell. Kylie always has tons of kids stuff to sell, and I had a few paltry Knick Knacks and DVDs that I didn't need to get rid of, but wasn't really watching any more. I also had a cd/book "How to Learn German" course that was "equivalent to 2 years of College German!" "Fast and Easy" that for some reason I purchased after I had years of German in highschool and a semester or two in college. I guess I thought I would become fluent and travel to Germany again and this time pronounce it correctly. That didn't happen. I still know how to say
"Tag Stephan! Was ist los?" "Schau FLori, es regnent!" "Was machts du jetz denn?" "Hast du eine party in deiner hose?"*
and so on.

At the end of the sale, when I had accumulated a whopping $20 for my efforts I started pushing this language course on people. "Hey, how's it goin'? Wanna learn German?" To which almost every single person replied "If it was Spanish, I'd be all over that".

Huh. Who knew? Nobody wants to learn German anymore. Sure, it's practically English, not very pretty, and hasn't been extremely useful in southern MN since all of our German grandparents died out taking their language with them. They left the potato salad and the sauerkraut, so that's somethin'.

Oh well, what are you going to do? Aside from gorge yourself in Sauerkraut Hotdish, you've just got to roll with the punches I guess. I passed the course along to Sara and she's going to try and sell it at her friends garage sale in "The Cities"

Anyway, later we liberated our earnings as well toasted Stella at The Saloon... but that is a completely different story.

Howktown Approves:

Having Garage Sales
Toasting Stella
Sauer Kraut!

*oh, you'd like to know what that says, don't you. Well, I have a beginner German course for REAL CHEAP, that I'm sure would help you out with that.

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