Every year, St. Patrick’s Catholic church in Rockville, Maryland holds a huge rummage sale that benefits a community in Montrouis, Haiti. Since 2012, the church has built a school, a clinic, and about 20 houses in Montrouis. A delegation of parishioners used to travel there every summer but now even the most intrepid missionaries are reluctant to enter Haiti, so the money is distributed directly to their Haitian friends in the town.
I hadn’t been to the rummage sale in several years, but my friend invited me to go, and rummaging seemed like a good way to spend part of a rainy Saturday morning, so off we went, with reusable shopping bags and cash in hand.
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A few months ago, I read a three-novel Barbara Pym anthology. The three novels all blend together in my memory now, but like all Barbara Pym novels, they featured genteel 20th century English women whose lives center around home and church and social life. In one scene, the protagonist helps to organize the church jumble sale (I think almost all Barbara Pym novels feature at least one mention of a jumble sale) and then she watches as several women squabble over a coat or a dress or something. We call them different things on each side of the pond, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a jumble sale or a rummage sale or even a flea market - the shoppers are highly competitive. There’s usually only one of any item, and the first person to see it, gets it.
I hadn’t planned to buy anything at all on Saturday, but after a few minutes in the crowds of rummagers, I found a very nice oversized Christmas coffee mug, a tiny souvenir dish with the coats of arms of the four provinces of Ireland, and a Charles and Diana commemorative plate. I looked at the plate closely, wondering if it was an authentic souvenir of the July 1981 royal wedding, and then decided that for $2, authenticity didn’t matter, so I picked it up to buy it. Then I saw an older (than me) woman nudge her friend and incline her head in my direction. The women didn’t speak to me, but they followed me around the parish hall as I continued to browse. When I stopped to look at something, they stopped right behind me. Obviously, one of those ladies wanted that plate, and they were waiting for me to put it down. But I wasn’t putting it down. And the more they followed me, the more determined I became not to release that plate from my Kung Fu grip.
I was holding my three planned purchases in my left hand and my phone in my right, when I thought of an idea for a presentation that I’m working on. Rather than forget the idea, I decided to email it to myself; but just as I was about to put my items down so that I could write this email to myself, I noticed that my stalkers were lurking, tracking me ever so closely. Hmm, I thought. That’s how you want to play this, is it? We’re predator and prey now, are we? I held onto my finds with my left hand, and drafted the email, badly spelled and poorly punctuated but who cares because it’s an email to myself, with my right hand, and my adversaries’ plans to swoop in while my guard was down was thwarted. Nine dollars later, my purchases and I were safely out the door.
It’s Thursday now, and between the passage of time and the undeniable fact that I don’t really need a Charles and Diana commemorative plate, the thrill of victory has subsided somewhat. I don’t even know what to do with that silly plate, really. Honestly, I feel a little foolish about the whole incident. The thing is that they could have just asked, and I’d have handed Charles and Di right over. It’s not like I had been hunting far and wide for a 1981 royal wedding souvenir. It was an I-can-take-it-or-leave-it scenario, and if one of the ladies had just approached me politely and said something like “Hey, if you change your mind about that plate, please let me know because I’ll be happy to buy it,” I would have given it up without a moment’s hesitation. But that’s not how it played out, is it? I wish I was nicer, but sometimes I’m just not. Bitches want to make a rummage sale into a contest, then I’m going to win, I tell you what.
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