Shoplifting an Estate Sale

This past weekend I helped a good friend put on an estate sale because her elderly father is moving into an assisted living apartment. We priced, hung, displayed, organized, inventoried, boxed, bagged, and separated so many things that meant so much to her and her family. Once Saturday morning arrived, we opened her  father’s house to the public.

Signs had been posted, classified ads in the local paper had been placed two weeks prior, and it seemed all roads led to Rome as the community descended on the “Mother of an Estate Sale,” as we had so named it. But something was bugging me. Something had been overlooked.

As the entourage filled the house and began to pilfer the items my friend’s father allowed us to sell for him, that overlooked thing that had been bugging me came clear and I turned to whisper to my friend, “We are going to be robbed blind, Girl!” She winced and scanned our immediate area to make sure no one heard my comment, then returned my obviously ridiculous statement with, “Jeanne! These people won’t steal from us! Goodness sake, we live in the Bible Belt!”

I told her these dear people will leave their Bibles at home and hide her stuff under their belts! And I set out to prove it to her as well as to satiate that bugging thing deep in my belly.

There are a few things I will never be completely free of since I am a *REFORMED* felon, but “Class A” felon, nonetheless: one is that I do not trust another living soul outside my husband and daughters. The second is that I love video surveillance, but no longer use it to have a jump on the cops approaching my home. The third is that I do not trust another living soul, well, you get the idea.

I jumped in my Jeep and flew to my house to gather the essentials for creating a back-room security den that would have made Wal-Mart security heads give a Tim Allen, “Oh-oh-oh!” About an hour later I had two monitors and a converted 13” black and white television showing me the most hidden parts of my friends’ home. Not more than fifteen minutes into the “patrol,” a middle-aged female entered a back bathroom and quickly stuffed two antique candle holders into her baggy purse. I had my daughter locate and bring my friend to the “security room.”

She was livid. She asked me if I had relapsed! She actually wondered if I were high! I answered, “Just watch, Kim! Just watch!” A few moments later, same middle aged female, same bathroom, and this time she was struggling to hide a small McCoy flower pot anywhere she could. Kim gasped and screamed, “Stop her, Jeanne!”

I was having a ball up until that point. I had forgotten security detail may include confrontation and I suck at confrontations. I detest a confrontation. But I mustered all the “Do the Right Thing” stuff I had in me and went to confront the lady.

She was heading to the little desk we had set up as a pay counter, of sorts, and I saw my chance. I duck-dodged-scampered to the chair beside the desk that Kim’s seven-year old Gracie occupied and scooped her into my lap as I took a seat and the Bible Belt Shoplifter approached. Fortunately, Gracie believes my crazy antics to be genuine fun and did not object. As the lady paid for a pair of Etienne Aigner boots that Kim’s late mother had worn maybe twice, I reached for a bag and declared, “I appreciate you saving us the trouble of bagging the other items, but I really need to see the price tag on them as my memory doesn’t serve me well in remembering the total – we sure priced a lot of things yesterday!”

I paused and waited, my finger motionless a few inches above the calculator keys. She was noticeably flustered, and to my complete delight over not having to  endure a confrontation, the lady removed the two candle holders and a tiny McCoy flower pot from her oversized purse. I believe she mentioned something about being accustomed to carrying a shopping bag and had just plain forgotten about the items, but I was wallowing in a bit of “I was right, I was right, neener-neener-neener,” and cannot recall her exact words.

The rest of the weekend, Kim manned the security monitors and me and Gracie collected the dough. Yeah, a few things made me think about this past weekend. I cannot believe someone would steal from a precious, elderly man who allowed his eldest daughter to put a price tag on his memories because it made her happy to “do her part” in his transition from independence to assisted living. But I knew it would happen. Looking back, I wish I had been wrong. I still would have sang the little jingle to Gracie, though slightly different: “I was wrong, I was wrong, neener-neener-neener.”