The Existential Garage Sale Manifesto

I walk through Sobo (South Boulder as the cognoscenti call it) this Independence Day morning. On Ash I encounter a small garage sale with a difference. A brown cardboard sign is posted with the Gothic lettered title: Existential Garage Sale

In very small black hand-lettering beneath is a lengthy diatribe on how we all have way too much stuff, how we have multiples of stuff we don’t even need singles of, how we’ll all feel a lot better if we unload some of our stuff and find ways to reuse the stuff we have. How stores like Target are filled with unnecessary stuff like many brands of toilet paper when it would be better to have one superior brand of toilet paper and be done with it.

Two thoughts immediately occur to me: 1) Despite the fact that I already have too much stuff, I really must find something to buy at this garage sale to reward the creator for this unusual and timely sign and 2) one man’s superior toilet paper is another woman’s bathroom crisis; I remember an old friend’s trip to Poland several few years ago when she was told to take toilet paper with her because of tp shortages. Shortages of Toilet Paper! That’s deprivation.

In any case, I found a dog-eared and annotated $1 copy of Eudora Welty’s “The Optimist’s Daughter” to buy, and had a short conversation with the existentialist, a relatively young man. I complimented him on the sign, and he told me he had sold it to a guy for $100 and would be handing it over once he moved away. I gave him another $1 in tribute to the sign.

He said he was “trying to be a good socialist through capitalism.”

“Easier said than done,” I remarked in return, and we smiled at each other. Another fine day in Sobo.