Where the Entertainment Lives Alongside the Bargains
Conversation between two employees overheard in a thrift store one October Sunday morning:
“I’m gonna be moving slow today, Janet. I rode the mechanical bull last night.”
“I hear that, Connie.”
It was enough to make me linger a bit longer than usual in front of the mismatched dinnerware from the ‘80’s section, conveniently situated right next to the open door of the store’s stockroom.
Unfortunately, the rest of Janet and Connie’s exchange was inaudible and I needed to keep moving lest it become obvious I was loitering and hoping for more eavesdropped details, or better yet, a glimpse of Connie making good on her declaration as she hobbled about the aisles, stooping stiffly to place newly-priced inventory on the shelves, groaning as she stood upright again. There’s a fine line between curiosity and “none of your business”, and I didn’t want to cross it. I frequent that store weekly (or used, to pre-pandemic). Plus, you know, basic human decency.
Years ago—circumstance and setting unimportant—a co-worker and I got to talking about human behavior. She told me how she enjoyed observing people in social settings and hearing how casual conversations took shape. Once, she sat quietly at a party and unobtrusively jotted down snippets of the exchanges going on within earshot of her perch. She then strung them together as one discussion and the results were hilarious. Fortunately, the friends she listened in on were good sports and eager to hear their individual contributions to the mixed up word salad she’d created. It quickly became a game for this circle of folks and I suspect they’ve archived some doozies in the years since. Given our present circumstances of more distanced and virtual gatherings, I doubt we’d get the same results. Zoom has its limits. Another reason to keep praying for an end to this pandemic.
We’re a fun bunch, humans. In any setting, we offer up what essentially comes down to our ongoing attempts to figure out the life we’re living and we occasionally accomplish this in the presence of unknowing spectators, also trying to figure out life. If you enjoy people-watching, what’s your favorite setting? For me, it’s thrift stores, hands down. The customers (of which I am one, and fully aware that someone may be observing me) are givers, representing a wide and varied swath of circumstance, background and purpose, as well as skill sets and word choices (spoken aloud if unruly children are present). In all my decades of shopping at thrift stores, I have yet to interact with anyone who isn’t kind or quirky, creative or just browsing. Sometimes we chat about the headlines, but most often we trade comments about the items we’re picking up, turning over in our hands, and then putting back on the shelf. At the store I (used to) visit weekly, one of the regulars sings gospel songs as she travels through the aisles, witnessing to everyone and no one in particular. She’s cheerful and harmless, and doesn’t ask for anything from the rest of us except a smile. I’d go every week just for that.
As a writer, there’s a bonus here—endless story prompts as I try to imagine the history of the items donated. The coconut husk monkeys, an entire rack of XXL t-shirts with the misspelled company name over the left pocket, the inevitable Blue Boy figurine (or painting) and the odd 90’s wedding dress. We donate items to the Goodwill nearly as often as we buy them, and it’s funny to see a set of plates we no longer needed sitting among the unfamiliar dishes that might once have held our neighbor’s dinner. We always check the price, nod in agreement that yep, that’s about what we’d pay for them now. It’s also important to note that every single room in our house boasts at least one if not seven thrift store purchases; let’s not even talk about what’s in the barn and the outbuildings. But where do those coconut monkeys come from? They’ve got “bad vacation souvenir” written all over them (just like the glued-up seashell sculpture I found in a tote in our attic a few years ago). And why doesn’t anyone want Blue Boy in the house anymore? Let yourself noodle around on that for a few hours.
Some weeks after I shut down our antiques business, I stopped by the Goodwill near our house on the way home from work and came across a complete three-piece set of Pyrex mixing bowls in the Gooseberry pattern. Not a scratch or stain on them, and after parting with $6, they were mine (the current price on eBay for the same set is clocking in at $152.50. Retirement plan anyone?). They are fully employed because I live in a functioning house, not a museum, and the largest one is the perfect size for making no-knead cold-rise artisan bread. When dough needs to sit for 18 - 20 hours, might as well look charming while doing it, right? But who donated them and why, I’ll never know. I’m just grateful they did, contributing a prize gem to my retro kitchen vibe.
I’d like to suggest that thrift stores are the great economic leveler. If we shop there, we do so for such different reasons it’s impossible to draw a hard and fast conclusion or establish any sort of sociological pattern. The act of buying anything second-hand stretches across the continuum of desire and need, and even those can be dissected into limitless variables until one wonders why one is asking the question in the first place. The answer doesn’t matter. What does matter is finding what we were looking for (insights and light humor via people-watching or that thingamajig without which we can’t repair the walk-behind lawn mower properly) and trading creative repurposing ideas with folks who just might be our neighbors the next block—or farm—over. When this pandemic is over, I’ll gladly return to the shelves and aisles of other people’s stuff, listen to a woman sing her joyful faith out loud without a trace of self-consciousness and smile knowingly in front of the coconut monkeys.
I just hope Connie is feeling better.
