Step right up. Rummage around. Bring your money.
Make sure you've taken your pills that help with your balance. You'll need them to keep from falling over in my driveway, which has a steep slant.
Via text, Instagram, Facebook, Fitbit, Amazon, YouTube, Snapchat, The Bernardsville News, and snail mail, I have been hyping my first-time-ever, never-gonna-happen-again, going-out-of-business driveway, disheveled garage, and poison ivy backyard sale.
Come check out my eclectic spread of sports collectibles. For $200 you can buy the football cleats my son wore in fifth grade for the Somerset Hills Bulldogs pony league team that lost more games than it won.
Also for sale, a half-empty, drip-stained can of off-white paint, somewhat rotted—all yours for $60. Paint is expensive.The underbelly of these cleats feature eight-year-old crusted chunks of mud. Other than that fire sale of miscellaneous stuff pawned at the Peapack-Gladstone/Bedminster each Fall, where else are you going to find Bulldog cleats decorated with eight-year-old mud?
Rather than having to wait until the Fall to get those dilapidated cleats for $2, you can get mine for $200 right now and throw them in a crevice in the corner of your garage like I did for eight years.
If you're shopping for your daughters, pick up a set of Toys “R” Us pink rollerblades that were in style ten years ago. Counterintuitively, buying them will make you feel you're up with the times. Old things are the new craze. Consider those circular, jet black 33 and 45 records that have become popular in recent years in a direct response to the global overdose of iPads, Pandora, and pirated internet songs.
Because I never considered rollerblading a sport, you can have them for free. Rollerblading is a fraudulent and sorry attempt at being a sport. It was a marketing stunt that got derailed.
You can have my son's navy blue baseball helmet that has dirt stains on the top and mildewed sweat on the inside. The helmet may not fit your head, but it may fit your son's. Why not give it a try? If it doesn't fit his head, just throw it in the corner of your garage like I did for ten years.
For those dad's out there thinking you have a son who might be a good baseball pitcher, I can take you to my backyard where, in the poison ivy, you will see a silver pitchback with a rectangular strike zone in the ballpark of regulation size.
Like everything in life, there is good news and bad news with this item. The bad news is the pitchback is bent—meaning half broken—and doesn't bounce the ball back far enough for it to be worthwhile to practice with. The good news is it's never been used and I assembled it myself, ensuring it will probably fall apart after your son throws against it a few times. You'll have to step through the poison ivy, pick it up, and carry it home yourself. But it's yours for free. Because you're my fellow neighbor, for $20 I'll help you carry it to your front curb as long as you live within one block of my house.
At a separate table that will look akin to a shrine you can consider buying a green Celtics jersey. Decorated with the number “33” in white letters, you are looking at Larry Bird's uniform. He is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Yes, he was better than Michael Jordan and LeBron James.
For $900,000 you can have it—with one caveat: within one week you will have to bring it back to me, dry-cleaned.
For you amateur carpenters in my hood, I have some random pieces of wood that used to hang out underneath our bed mattresses. I'll pay you $20 to take those off my hands. Sweetening the offer, I'll pay you $200 to take away my five smelly mattresses as long as you go up on a ladder to pull them down from a platform near the garage ceiling.
Also for sale, a half-empty, drip-stained can of off-white paint, somewhat rotted—all yours for $60. Paint is expensive. If I ever decided to paint something in my house, which would be the first time, I may want to use it. The $60 would reimburse me for the opportunity cost of having to buy more paint when I could have been watching ESPN.
I will also be selling my only snow shovel. Don't need it. I have managed to persuade my neighbor to use his snow machine to clear my driveway every winter from now on.
The last thing I'm selling at my yard sale is an online subscription to my new e-book, Wipe That Smile Off Sammy Sportface. In my driveway on your smartphone, I will show you how to go to Amazon.com, click on the book title, and hit “Add to Cart.” Go home immediately and read the masterpiece on your tablet PC. You will learn more about Caitlyn Bruce Jenner, the SWAC Conference, Donald Trumpty Dumpty, Tater Icabod Cuddles the Third, Crooked Hillary Clinton, Lyin' Ted Cruz, flying on Xanax, and how Sammy Sportface became Sammy Sportface.