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MY CRAZY STORY
What's your story? We'd like to hear it! Send it to hello@mycrazystory.com and we may create an episode about it!
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ABOUT THE EPISODE
Christie had an unusual job in her childhood. She spent most of her time in dead people's house ... but she didn't mind it!
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SCRIPT
Hi! My name is Christie. I started working when I was just 9 years old. You might think that’s weird, but you don’t know the weirdest part – my job was selling things that belonged to dead people. Creepy but true! Here’s my story.
My mom and dad own a company that does estate sales. If you don’t know what that is, it’s kind of like an auction, except we sell the dead person’s stuff right out of their old house. It makes sense when you think about it. The dead people’s kids can make money from all the left-over stuff they didn’t want for themselves and empty out the house at the same time. So anyway, that explains how our family even got a hold of dead people’s junk in the first place…and it’s more common than you think.
I started helping my mom right after I turned 9. Our first job was to look through these houses for good stuff to sell. We called it “raiding,” which totally made it feel like a game to me. I felt like such an adventurous pirate! We’d map out the whole house and all the treasures we found – china and artwork, old records and books - you name it! I was really good at wiggling into tiny nooks and finding hidden treasures. Once I even found an old diamond ring behind a chest of drawers – it was a real diamond, too. I wanted to keep it but Mom said we had to sell it because it wasn’t ours to keep. Dad’s job was to print out little price tags, so I helped him do that, too.
I loved playing dress-up. Sometimes I’d put on the pretty jewelry and dresses and pretend to be a Russian princess, or a man’s old coat and shoes and pretend to be a dad who went to an office. It never felt like I was doing work! Every house was a new adventure with a different story.
Sometimes I did get creeped out, though, when I’d be walking around upstairs all alone, especially if it was a big old creaky house. I‘d hear these noises that made my skin crawl. But I guess maybe if I was a ghost, I’d get mad if some strange kid was walking all over my house trying to sell my stuff, too! I would talk out loud to the ghosts about what I was finding, and what I was doing, and try and make them feel better. Although between you and me, talking out loud made me feel better too.
When I turned 13, I graduated to working the cash register, which we usually propped up on an old table by the door so that the people who came in to wander around the house could buy what they wanted on their way out. I trained my little sister, Kara, to take over my old job of “house raiding.” I taught her what to look for and she took her job very seriously. I loved the feeling of responsibility, teaching her, helping customers, taking care of the money - I felt like a real adult tapping on the keys of the register with my chipped nail polish.
There were a couple of downsides though, mostly people who tried to shoplift. I’m not sure if it’s actually called shoplifting if you’re doing it from a dead person’s house, but either way, they were stealing. It was always people you didn’t expect, too. Nice, frail-looking old ladies sliding little items into their purses when they thought no one was looking. Once a lady asked to use the bathroom and when my sister came in to check on her, she was going through the kitchen cupboards!
This was my introduction to the fact that people aren’t always what they seem. Usually, if one of us pointed it out, they’d pretend that they had just picked it up and forgotten they were holding it. We’d let them get away with that one - it was too much trouble to report them to the police anyway. If Dad was around, he’d give them a stern look and get whatever they were stealing back.
I can only remember him having to call the police once, and that was when this crazy guy tried to run off with an entire TV in his arms! Not cool...
Other people would show up crazy early. When we had a sale starting at 9 am, there would always be at least 5 people knocking on the door between between 6 and 9 wanting to know if they could have an early peek before everyone else - while we were super busy preparing everything. They also wanted to know whether we had a special deal for early-birds. Dad’s answer was always the same “Sure, we do! Early birds pay double for everything.” Yeah...I don’t remember any of them wanting to take a look after hearing that...
Then, during the sale, people would make absolutely ridiculous offers for things we had for sale.
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