"HOMES" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

GARAGE SALE REGULAR (picking up a sale object): What's this?
You: That's my grandmother's brooch. It's twenty-four-carat gold, it has
eight flawless diamonds, and these are real pearls in the center here.
It was presented to my grandmother personally by the King of England,
whose crest is on the back.
GARAGE SALE REGULAR: I'll give you a dollar for it.

The Regulars will quickly pick you clean of everything that anybody might
want to buy, so when your sale actually gets under way, it will consist of
people getting out of their cars, examining your possessions the way you might
view an unexpected leech in your pasta, then asking you: "Is this it?" The
only thing they'll be interested in buying is anything on which you have
carefully placed a large sign stating: NOT FOR SALE. They'll walk up, read
the sign carefully, then ask you: "Is this for sale?"

It can make you feel vaguely inadequate, watching people reject your
possessions. At least that's how it affects me. I find myself wanting to
please these people. I want to say, "If you don't see what you like, we'll
order it!" But of course this tends to defeat the whole purpose of the garage
sale, so the best thing to do is just sit there grimly until the sale is over
and you can throw everything away.

Okay, now that we've cleared out some of the dead wood, it's time to
proceed with the next step in the moving process, which is ...

GETTING A BUNCH OF EMPTY LIQUOR BOXES AND HURLING THINGS INTO THEM AT
RANDOM

You won't start out this way, of course. You'll start by selecting the
objects with great care and wrapping them up very gently. You'll keep this up
for a week or so, packing box after box, making regular trips for more,
getting to be good buddies with the clerks at the liquor store, getting a
satisfied feeling when you gaze upon the big stacks of filled boxes in the
living room. And then one day you'll look around and make a chilling
discovery: You're not making any progress. There's still just as much stuff
lying around unboxed as there was the day you started. There might even be
more. And so you start to pack with less care, faster and faster, until you
find yourself in an uncontrolled packing frenzy, throwing everything--dirt,
money, deceased spiders--into liquor boxes in a desperate effort to empty the
house.

What you are up against here is a strange phenomenon that has astounded
scientists and liquor store clerks for thousands of years: It is impossible to
empty a house. You can't do it. Somehow, word that you're moving gets out to
all the dumps and garbage disposal sites, and in the dead of the night there
comes an eerie rustling sound as all your old possessions, the ones you threw
away years ago--broken appliances, coffee grounds, Pat Boone records--rise up
and come limping and scuttling back to your house, where they nestle in the
backs of your closets, waiting to spring out at you the way Tony Perkins kept