Today's #shortstory #SomeoneActuallyBoughtIt

“I'm tired of your games.”

The Riddler* #quote

Today's story is a special tale about a book. A book of mine at the garage sale today. I hope you enjoy!

Somebody Actually Bought It

       Two boxes of books laid waited to be sold at the garage sale. People expect some items at garage sales to have tales behind them. Like, “Oh, this is Auntie May's old braclet, she was a kind old woman blah blah blah etc.”. These books didn't have a tale worth a novel, novelette, short story, flash fiction or pamphlet. I bought them, I read them. I buy a lot of books. My room gets full of books. Well, somebody's got to go. So that's they're tale. They're all losers. Loser books. They got voted off the island. Exiled from my closet and into that garage sale box.

       I classified my books in three ways: Big books(50 cents), little books(25 cents), magazines(10 cents). Little books were things like those tiny joke books or fact books that I got some Birthday's or Christmases. Now they did give me some good memories, but you can only read them so many times before they must be exiled into the garage sale box. Even the mighty “100 Greatest Jokes Ever” you are still worth 25 cents after it's been read enough times. Most of my books on larger end were video game guides that I used up that were on the larger end.

       And video game guides is where we find the true protagonist of our tale. The one who managed to succeed despite all odds against him. Despite the fact he looked like one of the worst books I'd ever seen. So for his accomplishment we're going to name him Trooper.

The morning of the garage sale I looked at Trooper in the box and I thought to myself. “I'm never going to sell this thing am I?”

       Trooper may have been a perfectly fine book when I first got him. But now he was a mangled wreck. Mangled not being exaggerated. A corner of the cover was completely missing. Time long ago removed the color on another portion of the cover to show the white part underneath(this leaves about 40% of the cover wrecked). The rest of Trooper's face was wrinkled and bent all the way to his backside. From the missing part of the cover bent of pages came out from Trooper. The part of the spine that held the pages together was intact but the actual label was falling off in little flakes. Trooper was from a time before I took care of my books well, and boy did I not take care of him. All of the other books much better, even to the point of looking brand new.

      The time was around 10:00. The ratty book waited in the shade for customers. We(me and other family  members) put most of our products under the shade-giving out-cropping usually reserved the cars. The outcropping was a garage and not a garage at the same time: yet the sale was one all the same.

I spent most of my time in the shade. The one disadvantage is that my hair wouldn't turn that much more blonder. When I expose my hair to sun it turns more blonde...to me one of the few advantages to the outside during a sunny day in the desert.

       An old man in early grandfather age walked up and asked “Have any old Nintendo games?” to everyone. If I could comment on his clothes I would but they existed in a sort of limbo of boringness so astounding that I can't remember a single thing about them.

      “Well, I don't have any old Nintendo games,” I told him. “Does anyone else have any?” I didn't know the stock of everyone else and a friend of a family member brought some kids toys so for all I knew something was tucked away. “But I do have some video game guides that go with games.”

I brought him over to my book box and showed him Trooper. He actually asked me about it and I thought to myself “How could he actually want that?”. Mom suggested to the man that his “grandson” would like them. After a few minutes of conversation with me about that book and others he bought Trooper.

Though maybe Trooper should get a different name. Trooper implies that our little mangled, torn up, hurt, bashed, ruined book had some sort of special working property that made him sellable. But a better name may be Lucky.

      Other books were sold besides Lucky. I showed all the video game guides I had to the man. He didn't buy several of the books I had for newer books. (He asked for “old Nintendo” games after all.) When Mom suggested a grandson he didn't respond, and I think he would get specific game guides for games he knew his grandson had.

      I noticed the man had the voice and mannerisms of a salesman. He wanted to see everything I had pretty quickly. By chance I believe a special man visited Lucky that day. A salesman for old game items and picked up the damaged book and all my others because of it. (He picked up my Super Mario 64 one immediately, another old one).

      And if Lucky hadn't been lucky a few more pieces he may never have been purchased, a few more pieces may have fallen off and then he would have a new name, Garbage.