Alas, it is May. I wake up every morning to birds chirping, geese honking (yes, really, they wake me up!), and a warm apple blossom breeze blowing through my bedroom curtains. Serenity? Yes. This is spring. The onset of spring also marks the beginning of one of my favorite times of year: the glorious garage sale season. Though I pride myself on not stuffing my house with useless finds (ever seen the show Hoarders? that'll turn you around right quick when waffling over whether you really need that oil lamp for fifty cents... and for the record, I don't need that oil lamp). Last weekend was the Westnedge Hill neighborhood yard sales. For those of you not familiar with the area or the event, Westnedge Hill is an area of charming older houses just a few miles from downtown Kalamazoo (fun to drive through and house-gawk, if you're into that sort of thing). This is a very well-known event around here. Area business even market their weekend sales specifically for garage sale hoppers (Big Apple Bagel, for example, advertised: "Westnedge Hill garage salers, lunch with us!"). Streets are completely lined with parked cars, toddler-toting moms are rifling through the wares at hundreds of sales, the ice cream man rolls his van through the neighborhood (I was incessantly tortured for the next four days with my inability to quit humming the first riff of "Pop Goes the Weasel"), and cops are in their glory, slapping parking ticket after parking ticket on illegally parked cars. It's a fun place to be.
I was flying solo through Westnedge Hill, though I eventually met up with my sister, mom, and grandma closer to the end of the day. When garage-saling was over, I made my way back to my car (parked about 3 miles away), exhausted both physically and mentally from fighting the crowds and haggling over my purchases. Proudly displayed in my apartment are my trophies from the Battle at Westnedge Hill: - a real silver tray (desperately seeking some major polish-renovation, but still totally worth $1.50)
- a bread knife (which I wielded post-purchase as though it were some Amazon machete)
- a Trivial Pursuit game (like-new condition... and no wonder, for does anyone actually play this game??)
- a couple books (one chosen because of the color - a fun teal hardcover entitled Timepiece, by Richard Paul Evans; the other [The Best Loved Poems of the American People] purchased for multiple reasons: a) its essence being an anthology of poems, b) it's a beautiful old book, and c) the inscription inside the front cover is poetry in itself:
Check out the date: February 1961 -- 50 years ago, "Denny" was totally fascinated by "Sue's" remarkable humility, and made it a point to tell her so. Makes me wonder about Sue. What makes her so fascinatingly humble? And this book was perfect for her, huh? So I bought this book for a whopping 50 cents-- it's an interesting reminder to strive for humility and keep one's feet on the ground. Humility is a positive trait that's rarely mentioned, or often goes unnoticed. Think about it -- when you hear a glowing description of someone, you'll often hear words like "caring," "gentle," "compassionate," "friendly," "intelligent," "energetic," "calm," etc. Oh, that's So-and-so; you'd like her. She's really ____ (fill in the blank). These are all remarkable traits, and if you can be described as such, BRAVO TO YOU. Now, try and think of the most fascinatingly humble person you know (and by the way, I don't expect it to be me, but thanks). Take a cue from Denny: tell that person how special they are, and try to learn from them. Imitation is, after all, the most sincere form of flattery. Yes, flatter that humble person -- they likely deserve it!
Note: If anyone has any idea of how DART II (Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis, maybe?) relates to humility/ inspiration/ poetry, let me know...
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