Toy Sale

Once a year, some group in our area organizes a big consignment sale for children stuff. It’s a good thang. It let’s parents, especially low income parents, buy toys and equipment (strollers, highchairs, etc.) for really cheap, and it let’s the sellin’ parents make a little something back. For the past two or three years, Cowgrit has consigned some of our boys’ old junk to the sale.

I’m all for just takin’ our old stuff to Goodwill or somethin’, just to get the junk out of the house as soon as possible. But Cowgrit likes to hold onto the stuff for several months and sell it at this sale. It does end up bringin’ us a hundred bucks or so, which she turns around and uses to buy the boys new clothes and stuff. So I don’t complain about us holdin’ onto the old stuff too much. She’s the one that puts the effort into taggin’ everything for the sale, so it’s no skin off my nose.

Anyway, durin’ the organization for this sale, we usually haul our junk down there early in the set up day (a week before the event). Every time I’ve taken our stuff in the buildin’, it’s been mostly empty. But this time I took our stuff late in the day, and I got to see what the sales floor really looks like. There’s toys and equipment everywhere; dozens of everything, all over the floor and tables.

I was stunned. I never knew there was this much stuff in the event. And most of it’s in pretty good shape. (The stuff we’ve always put in has been nice, never real junk.) I’m impressed. I actually saw some toys I’d like to have, that I’ve never seen in stores.

There was a full wall shelf, probably six feet wide by eight feet high full of Elmo dolls. There was a clear plastic box the size of a large footlocker full of loose Lincoln Logs (labeled as one item for sale). There were prob’bly more than 20 bicycles. There were rows of highchairs and car seats. Just a ton of stuff.

The sale also has kids’ clothes, but that part of the event is in another buildin’. I took our old kids’ clothes in and commenced to hanging them on the labeled racks. Most of the clothes we were sellin’ was stuff I hadn’t seen before. But there was one shirt in our stack that I decided to keep.

When Calfgrit7 was 2 or 3 years old, he loved Thomas the Tank Engine. One of his fav’rite things was a blue t-shirt with Thomas on the front. He’s long since outgrown it, and it’s too small for Calfgrit3 to wear (the season wasn’t right when he was the right size for it), so it’s just an old useless shirt now. But when I look at it, I just want to hug it. When I picture Calfgrit7 at 3 years old, this is the shirt I see him wearin’ in my mind’s eye. So I pulled it out of the sale stack and brought it back home with me.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com