Life does lots of funny things to you, without you even knowing about it. I mean, one minute you're just doing your usual routine, and in a flash, you see something, or something happens that throws everything out of whack, and everything changes forever. That's kind of like what happened to me when I found this magic ring. Anyway, let me not get ahead of myself here, and throw you off. Let me start at the beginning, but first allow me to introduce myself to you people.
My name is Tom Smith. basic about me? I'm 22 years old, I'm single, I live with my best friend Mary in a small apartment, I work full time, and I hope to just be happy with my life and career ( once I figure out what that is ). Yeah, the clichΓ© nice life with no direction thing, that's me all right, but I didn't really see it like that. I was, and still am, the kind of guy who lives in the moment, so my view of the future was overwhelming to me sometimes. So, to spare myself the mental drama, I just liked living in the moment. The key to that for me was clean living. I don't do drugs or drink, or any of that stuff. I do date sometimes, but work usually messes things up for me emotionally and time wise. Who would have thought being in retail could do that to a guy? who knew? I also dearly love my best friend Mary, but I knew she didn't feel that way, so I never told her. We are perfect for each other, we have a lot in common, but she prefers more rugged and dangerous types. I mean, being in retail, one can't be too rugged, or you'd scare business away.
Being in retail did have it's advantages. One of them was that I picked up a knick for being able to get a good bargain on things I bought. Of course, I really put that ability to the test, every weekend, when I would drive out for twenty minutes, to the nearby outdoor auction / flea market wonder of a place that is called Harkersville auctions. It was so strange because the actually place was not in Harkersville, but in the neighboring town of Carter. Don't ask me why, I dunno, it just is. But, not that I cared much where it was, it was the coolest place ever in the world. It was like a crossroads of retail activity.
Old items and the latest merchandise side by side. Antiques and state of the art items for sale. Some sneaky upstart bootleggers and black market types selling items next to the dairy farmer who sells their quality products direct every week there for the past 40 years. It was always packed best in the morning, and by like 4 or 5 in the afternoon, the place was as dead as Richard Grieco's career. The front of the place was packed with the independent business merchants, with the newer items, and the money to afford the premium slots of business. The places further back had the junk sellers, the families with stuff to sell, and the whole overall mix that makes it worth while. I sometimes sold things there also, but rarely now with my time.
One Saturday, I went there alone to shop, since my friends were in the middle of intense studying, and started looking like usual. I made my way over to this guy I called the CD guy. He had a large selection of CD's, and he sold them all for $3.00 a piece, all originals, not hot to my knowledge, sometimes luck might show a recent CD to pop up. That's how my large CD collection nearly quadrupled in size after I started shopping here. Not much from the usual ones here, but I did buy Janet "Design Of A Decade" because I know Mary adores Janet like I do, the soundtrack to "Boomerang", an early CD by Moby that I didn't recognize before whose title eludes me now, and a compilation CD of some 90's soft rock and pop hits that I never seen before. I also got a new cover for my cell phone, with multiple American flags on it, and some cool action figures for my collection.
I collect them and display the rare ones. Sometimes I might sell an older one to someone here, if I'm short on money in between paydays every two weeks. As a matter of fact, he prior week, I had sold one of my few extra unopened Thundercats figures to an old man, some new guy I never seen before. He had a motor home parked, and also had some aroma candles and mystic trinkets along with a large collection of vinyl records for sale. He said he was collector also, and he needed one figure to complete his set of Thundercats, and he was going to sell the set to his brother, who had some small museum in Kansas for toys I think, I dunno. The memory of that incident had popped in my head, at the very moment I bought these figures from a nice family, for 50 cents a piece each. I decided to see if this guy was there, and made my way over to that same lane I recalled he was in. I went there, and that man was right, still. He looked over and saw me, and he smiled, as he recognized me.
"Hey there young man! " he said, getting up off his beach chair.
"hey again." I said, reaching to shake his hand.
"back again to sell more things?" he asked, returning the handshake to me.
"No, I'm just buying this time." I replied.
"ah, well feel free to look," said the old man, as he adjusted his baseball cap.