Early in 2013 I lived in a large Texas city without a vehicle. I’d had a van, but it was gone. Friends from college let me live with them while I earned money to buy myself another van. I depended on Craigslist a lot in those days.
I’d responded to a Craigslist ad placed by an elderly psychiatrist looking for a house and dog sitter. I got that job, which led to a regular gig cooking and cleaning and doing yardwork for her. I supplemented that income by scouring Craigslist for one-time money-making opportunities. I participated in two studies at the local university, one of which required me to lie about my past drug use, one of which required me to run on a treadmill until I thought I would puke, and one of which required me to climb into MRI machine and lie without moving while the apparatus recorded my brain thinking.
One day I saw an ad seeking someone to help prepare for a garage sale. I emailed the woman who’d placed the ad; later we talked on the phone. She agreed to hire me and pay me $10 an hour to help her set up her sale.
On the morning of the day before the sale, my friend drove me to the woman’s house. She lived near the university in a spacious home with a huge backyard. She was moving, she explained, and she was trying to sell most of her belongings. I think she’d been living in that house a long time and had accumulated a lot of junk she didn’t want to haul across town, much less across the country. She hoped to make some extra money by selling what she no longer wanted.
She was setting up some items for sale in her living room, but most of the sale would take place in her backyard. My job was to sort the contents of large cardboard boxes piled in the backyard and artfully place like with like.
I sorted through a lot of clothing. Some items were hung on a saggy clothesline strung between two trees, but most of the items were folded and stacked on a tarp on the ground. The clothing was nothing special—no costumes or designer pieces. Mostly it was cheap stuff, garments most people would have dumped at a thrift store the moment they fell out of style.
Although I’d said nothing judgmental about the quantity or quality of the items for sale, several times throughout the day, the woman for whom I was working assured me she was not a hoarder. I didn’t really care if she was a hoarder or not. She was paying me for my time, and the working conditions weren’t horrendous. Besides, as I reassured her each time she brought up hoarding, having a garage sale probably meant she wasn’t a hoarder. Hoarders don’t have garage sales, right?
Then I found the Hammer pants. Remember MC Hammer? According to Wikipedia, he enjoyed the height of his popularity and commercial success from approximately 1988 to 1998 with hits such as “U Can’t Touch This” and “Pray.” Now he appears in commercials for Command hooks around Christmas time. I don’t know what MC Hammer wears now, but back in the day he wore Hammer pants, an article of clothing that another Wikipedia article describes as
customized/modified baggy pants tapered at the ankle with a sagging rise made suitable for hip-hop dancing…Hamer pants were popularized in the 1980s and 1990s by rapper MC Hammer who would entertain/dance in them…
This woman I was working for on a spring day in 2013 was going to try to sell a pair of Hammer pants!
I didn’t say anything. For once I kept my big mouth shut. This woman was paying me, and it wasn’t really my place to judge. She probably wasn’t actually a hoarder with a psychological disorder, but holding onto a pair of Hammer pants at least fifteen years past their heyday seems like an irrational thing to do. Did she think they would come back into fashion? Did she think someone would pay top dollar for them? I didn’t even ask. I simply folded them and put them in a stack with the other pants.
Very interesting story! So true hoarders don’t have a garage sale. I just might find some Hammer Pants as I go through my stuff … LOL!!! It is amazing how things get tossed in to the back of a closet, drawer or trunk and never touched again. I found some t-shirts from my high school days, even old posters. But I just tossed them in the trash 🙂
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