A Letter to Myself

Garage Sale

The garage sale had started forty-five minutes ago, and we hadn't even gotten one customer. I guess it wasn't surprising, though; we lived on a busy road, and we didn't belong in the subdivision. While we were waiting for customers, we added another table of junk to sell. I was really glad I slept late. I felt kind of bad for Mom and Jennie because they woke up early for nothing.

Speaking of Mom, I had to talk to her about my desk.

I approached Mom, organizing my thoughts.

 "Uh, Mom?" I started, rocking on my feet. "Can you not sell my desk? It's very important to me."

 "No, we need to sell it," Mom instantly answered. "I know it's important to you, but… You've been living without it for a year now, and you've been okay. I had to leave behind a lot of things at the other house, like that hall table and the lamp. You know, the one from grandma and grandpa, remember? But I'm fine. And you will be, too. Remember, they're just things."

As hard as it was to believe her, I knew Mom was right. But I still didn't want to see it go.

I sat down at my desk, probably for the last time. Memories of all the great times with it flooded back to my mind as I dozed off on the desk's surface.

***

"Janessa! Janessa!!" I felt myself being shaken. "You have to wake up! Someone just came into the drive!" Jennie poked my head annoyingly.

"Okay, okay…" I slowly lifted my head, but Jennie was gone already. She was already greeting the first customers.

"Hi there!" she waved, obviously very excited. "Welcome to Kuceric's Knick-Knacks!" Oh, she was so cute sometimes. "Is there anything specific that you're looking for?"

The middle-aged couple chuckled to themselves. "No, we're just browsing," the balding man replied. "Thank you, though." He took his wife by the hand and began strolling through the aisles. I felt a slight pang of jealousy.

As they weaved through the aisles, I started to worry. What if they saw my desk? What if they bought it?

Oh, no. They were coming my way…

"Well, isn't this a lovely desk!" the chubby woman beamed. "Is this yours?" She faced me. Why did she have to talk to me? It was hard enough having strangers rummage through our things.

Without speaking, I shyly nodded my head.

"How much are you asking for it?" I was hoping she wouldn't ask that.

Well, it is antique. I tried to think of a fair price. Antique things are worth a lot. I thought about making the price outrageously overpriced, but we needed all the money we could get, and this was one of the most expensive things we had to offer.

After a long silence, I just shrugged.

"Ohh, I see… you don't want to sell it," the woman sympathetically said. "That's so cute. I remember my first garage sale. I didn't want to sell any of my things!" She laughed a little. "Well, don't worry about it. I understand." She patted my head and waddled to the register. I took a sigh of relief when they left.

I noticed that they were buying a toy drum and some stuffed animals from Jennie's old collection. I could tell from the look on Jennie's face that she was a little disappointed.

"With the holidays coming, we thought we could get some presents for our grandkids," I heard the man explain. That was really sweet. They seemed like a nice couple. I wished I had grandparents like that.

"Thank you very much!" Jennie yelled as they drove away. Then she carefully ran over to me. (Her foot still hurt from the desk incident.)

"How did I do, Janessa?" she squealed. "What did you think?"