Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Welcome to the Nightmare

Thrift store shopping is an art. It can be a hobby enjoyed by people of all ages as well as a comfort through viewing gateways to long forgotten pasts. Curiously your feet take you on a path through familiar objects, all appropriately aged and some covered with dust. You sift through dozens of items hoping to find that one perfect treasure, while in reality, the back of your mind reminds you that it is unlikely. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you go home empty handed, only to venture back another day. Each time you return it's always the same feeling... The air scented with hints of moth ball coated goods mixed with an aged closet smell. Organization hardly exists and it's always up to you to independently find what you're looking for... For you see, there's an independence in shopping at thrift stores. They are all unique in their own special ways and almost always are guaranteed to hold something meaningful at least once in their cluttered existence. Best of all, the price is right.

We've all been there before. An item calls to you from across the room. There's a type of magic in the moment as your feet carry you to its discovery. You feel like that kid in a candy store and you feel rewarded by the thrift store gods for every single high dollar item you've donated to the Good Will. Finally your years of searching high and low for the perfect thrift store treasure are now paying off! The second you find yourself staring down at that particular item, however, is when it all hits you hard... That sinking feeling of disappointment in one certain find starts it all. The disappointment doesn't last long though, as it is quickly replaced by sheer perplexity. You cock your head, rub your eyes, and stare at the object for a second time. And a third. And a forth... You pick it up as if you expect it to be some sort of sick mirage. It's not. It's real. Wonder hits you as to how this specific item came to be, but then you realize that in thrift stores anything goes... You've stumbled upon a thrift store nightmare.

This blog is a chance for all of our thrift store nightmares to be brought into the light of day, shared to the public to experience the same horrors and bafflements we've lived through while doing our routine thrift store shopping. It's a collaborative effort between husband and wife, both of us finding equal amounts of haunting objects and sharing loads of laughs while doing so. The idea to expose these nightmares came to us from experience, living in a town that hosts a variety of these classic thrift stores, all with their own unique possessions. It became a bit of an obsession for the two of us to find something horrible with each visit and most of the time we were never disappointed. And so came this blog.

We welcome anyone to join in on sharing their own thrift store nightmare finds. It's quite easy! Just email us a picture at Thriftstorenightmares@gmail.com. After all, for every town that holds a thrift store, there are at least a dozen nightmares waiting to be unleashed.

-k8 and j-on

1 comment:

  1. I was reading your e-how article on how to pass the pre-employment assessment tests? Most of the one's i have taken are in the answer option form of: strongly agree, somewhat agree, etc.
    You suggest that there ARE right and Wrong answers that companies look for (like walmart, which i took yesterday). And that this type of format should only be answered with strongly agree or strongly disagree and the in between answers would be counted as wrong. However, after reading the advice of some other pages, they insinuate that trying too hard to answer with what THEY are looking for (and with only extreme answers) that you will raise a red flag and they will assume you are telling lies, or faking. Have you passed these tests yourself with the approach you have written about? What are your credentials? is there more info about this on the web? A secret stash of answers on some little known site maybe? whats company propaganda and what is not? Ive spent almost my whole life as a musician and had to retire from it for reasons too long to explain here. But now being in the mainstream market again I find these tests to be worrisome and deflating. Please help...desperate for work or else facing very seriously bad future! Prefer something that doesn't require a degree but offers some "upward mobility".

    ReplyDelete

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