It was a day we had been waiting for with anticipation for almost two years. We were almost giddy with excitement and brimming with anticipation. The Tour de France? No, Grenoble was rebuffed this year for smaller, prettier suitors. A dream vacation? Hardly. A trip to the Greek islands wasn't in the cards nor the budget. No, I am speaking of the once-a-year extravaganza called the Gières Vide Grenier. Gières is the little suburb in which we live, and a vide grenier (literally "empty attic") is our version of a community-wide rummage sale. We don't have an attic. But we do have a garage, which is a lower altitude version of an attic that a car is supposed to go in but rarely does. And our garage was badly in need of being vide. That's right. We finally were going to participate in this major event that afterward would allow us to walk through our garage without stubbing a toe or snagging a sweater. It was an event we were forced to wait for, even though we had barrels full of stuff. Just accumulated this-and-that that got shipped from Bangladesh but that either wouldn't make it into our more down-sized residence here or had been broken by the thugs who loaded/unloaded our container. Why a wait of two years to participate? First, we were not permitted by customs laws to sell, give away or otherwise dispose of anything we brought duty-free into France for a minimum of one year. Why a second year of waiting? We hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity last year because, frankly, we didn't feel that our French was up to the task. We imagined ourselves approached by interested buyers, asking us various questions in French such as "Ceci coute combien?" ("How much is this?") or "Prendrez-vous quatre-vingt dix centimes?" ("Will you take 90 cents?) and us botching a transaction by inadvertently saying something like "Écoute-moi, Crétin!" (Listen to me, you moron!") When we meant to say "Ça coute moins que tu crois" ("That costs less than you think"). Nothing hurts sales like insulting the customers. Its one of those timeless business principles.
We've done more yard sales than you can shake a stick at. But in France, there's no Wal-Mart, selling garish fluorescent poster board. And here you're not allowed to duct-tape badly written signs to lampposts in the wee hours, directing weekend bargain hunters to the sale held in the comfort of your garage driveway. No, this kind of clandestine self-promoting activity is frowned upon by the authorities. You must wait for your town's annual vide grenier where everyone breaks out their old VHS tapes and scuffed ski boots to sell all at once and all together at what inevitably becomes one huge blur of junk. With the exception of our table, of course. But we couldn't get most of the people looking down their noses at our neatly displayed wares to see that. We had stellar crowds, but sub-par sales. They kept gawking and going by, but few reached for their wallets. I think most of our comrades had the same experience, based on the amount of full boxes seen going back into vendors' cars at the end of the day. It just reminded me of an important principle - if you have junk, just get rid of it. No one else is probably interested in my junk. And I shouldn't hold onto it in the hopes that I can profit from it before letting it go.
There's different kind of "junk" all of us have. There's the stuff in the garage and attic. And then there's the soul variety. Sometimes we need someone else to come around and look scornfully at what we've been holding onto to realize it's not really worth what we imagined. Better to just cut your losses and let it go. There's no more room for it and it's really just clutter anyway. Thankfully, we also have a recycling center in our town called a déchetterie that is open almost every day. I can drive right up to the big container any time I want, dump what I don't want and drive away. That simple. I don't need to wait for the big yearly moment to see if it's really worth tossing out or not. Needless to say, we won't have a table to sell things next year. But my garage is staying junk-free just the same.
