Pure Priceless Pandemonium

Two Scarfs............................................. 2 Dollars
One Pair of Sunglasses.......................... 3 Dollars
A Water Bottle....................................... 1 Dollar
Wasting 2 hours of a Saturday morning, crowded around hundreds of bargain-hungry savages............................... Totally worth it! (You thought I was going to say "Priceless.")

So I went to the BYU Lost & Found sale yesterday morning. That's when they take all the stuff that's been turned in to Lost & Found over the past year that hasn't been claimed and put it out on a bunch of tables for the freak-fest that is this sale. They must have a TON of stuff that gets turned in to L&F because all the stuff that's not claimed amounts to what merits hundreds crazed Mormons and lunatics turning out to the event like it's Christmas eve and no on has done their Christmas shopping.

I got there about 15 minutes before they opened the doors and I had to stand in the back of a line that had to consist of at least 4 hundred people already in front of me. People must have been queuing for several hours. I thought to myself, "how ironic... we Mormons sometimes can't show up to church on time, but somehow a few of us manage to show up to the L&F sale 2 hours early!"

Actually, the crowd mostly consisted of poor freshmen and young students who all understand this well-known secret for what it's worth: really REALLY cheap stuff, and some of it can actually be worth your time. It's just that there were so many people there that I was very unproductive. What I needed was a team to organize and to spread out to find all the good stuff before it's sifted through by dozens of others.

Alas, I didn't have access to such a team, and I ended up just observing the craziness of the moment. Picture this:

• Middle-aged mothers bumping into you, and not apologizing, or saying anything for that matter, because they're too distracted with searching through the rubble of sale items.

• People literally RUNNING to get into the sale. Like all the good stuff will have gone if they just walked in. (And by the way, they handed out "Rules" for the L&F sale on a little sheet of paper while standing in line before it started, and Rule #6 was "No Running!")

• A young man (likely a freshman) walking around with at least 5 calculators in his hands, apparently so excited that he could hardly contain his glee. (A site like this is particularly embarassing to me because he's probably going to end up studying engineering for the rest of his college experience, and it's kids like that who give us engineers such a bad rap... some of us are actually normal human beings.)
  

• B.O.

• Unattended little kids kicking soccer balls around or riding around on scooters that are for sale.

• An auction is held in the midst of it all for all the more valuable items, such as cameras and ipods. One such item was an 8 Gigabyte 2nd generation ipod touch that went for $95, even though the auctioneer prefaced the sale of this item by saying that it was going for $70 on ebay!

Needless to say, I was amused by all of the demonstrations of interesting human behavior, of which I must admit I was a part. Although I do have to say I did feel a little like I always feel whenever I'm at D.I.... just a little gross because I'm sifting through a bunch of other peoples' used, and probably dirty, stuff.

All in all, I recommend this sale to all of you who, like me, are in love with a good bargain. And bring a friend because it's fun to observe and make fun of all the crazies.

The end.