an evening at the thift store

Last nite the family decided to make a stop at one of the better local thrift stores. It must remain nameless, however. You'll see why. And, trust me, better means many of the clothing items are brand new...you can tell by looking at the tags...many of which have obviously never been worn.

Now we had a plan. Mondays are senior citizen discount days. This was Sunday nite. Shopping was at full thrift shop retail. Hey! The discount is sizeable. 40%! So anything that sells for $10 is only going to cost $6. Come on. That's quite a reduction. Nearly half!

We had already called and confirmed that the store would NOT hold any items over nite so that "gramma" could pick them up Monday at the discounted price. So we thought, well, we'll just pick out what we're going to get and then tomorrow "gramma" can go and make the purchases. Ah, just one glitch. HOW to assure that those very items would be available? That was the question.

Well, we dealt with it. I found a dresser and theorized that if I were to put some of the items inside the bottom drawer of this dresser, by golly, they might just be there in the morning, first thing. So in went three pairs of shoes.

Then my daughter hung the clothing items she had found for my grandaughter in amongst the kids' clothing items, and wandered off to shop some more. She had also included a cool pair of brown wide leg pants she found for herself. Shortly after she had hung the items in place, I noticed a store worker with a basket of items standing right in front of our little "stash"! Now it was near closing time. We were hanging out til the last minute to assure our goodies were intact for the next day's shopping. I planned to do that while everyone else was at work and at school. When I noticed the store worker, I panicked. I made a ruse of browsing items directly next to the store worker...some puzzles and games, which kept falling off the shelves, and landing on my feet. Some of them were even heavy and banged my toe. With a sigh of relief, I noted she finally left, and I surveyed our little "stash" was still there. I remember thinking, she's going to see these belong in the women's section or something and take them away. Our plan could be doomed!

Well, AFTER the store worker left, along come these two ladies with their basket...and wouldn't you know,,,,,they stop DIRECTLY in front of our "stash" and the NEXT thing I know, this lady is putting a pair of the stashed pants, a deep red pair, INTO HER CART!!! I was completely panic-stricken by then, and I slowly, nervously, walked over to her cart, and gingerly pulled the red pants OUT of her CART and said, "I'm so terribly sorry, but I just can't let you have these!" Then I carefully explained that we had just hung those items there temporarily while my daughter shopped elsewhere in the store, and I was just browsing nearby (my job? albeit, self-imposed,,,to keep an eye on everything). I apologized profusely, but in the end, I KEPT those red pants in my hands, and then I noticed the other lady was handling the fabric of the brown wide leg pants still hanging on the rack that my daughter had put by earlier. Now I reach past the second lady, and grabbed all the items that we had earlier hung there, two shirts, and three pairs of pants, and heck if I didn't just have to walk away,,,again, being as nice as I could possibly be about it,,,but nevertheless, I was NOT giving up my claim.

After I told my daughter what had happened (naturally my daughter cracked up), we sat down in the easy chairs for sale at the thrift shop, made a list of everything, which also included a dress for my granddaughter's Halloween costume (the theme for which has been determined to be "Ghetto Fabulous"), which we had hidden underneath the most godawful chartreuse polyester knit dress we were SURE no one would give a second glance at until after I got to the store at 9 a.m. to assure the purchases...after we made the list, I found another empty bottom dresser drawer, and in went the shirts and the pants. At 7 pm, closing time, we left, laughing hysterically all the way home over our combined craziness. My daughter called her friend and told her about our ordeal, and the friend said, "Man, what the Symons family won't do for a bargain!!"