No Ill Will at the Goodwill

Anyone who thinks we do not have a caste system in America has not been to Walmart or Goodwill lately. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those places, just that I don’t want to buy my clothing at either one of them. I am lucky. I don’t have to. I can afford to buy my clothing at Target.

I didn’t grow up upper middle class, but my mother liked to pretend we were, so I have a lifetime of looking down my nose at other people, even while wearing hand me down underwear that had already been used by both my older sisters. I have a real hang up on hand me down underwear.

I had to go to Goodwill the other day to buy a whole bunch of crap for a special relay for my daughter’s Fifth Grade Day at school. This field trip to a local park is a day for all the fifth graders to blow off steam, because the life of an eleven year old is very demanding and high stress, what with having to remember to take your backpack to school and find your sneakers in the morning. The event I am coordinating involves each class dressing their teacher in a variety of articles of clothing, and the first class that is finished adorning the teacher wins. Allegedly, hilarity will ensue.

I was on a mission to find shirts, skirts, necklaces, bracelets, scarves, ties, belts, hats, and shoes, all on a budget of roughly one hundred smackers. It might sound easy, but finding about fifty things for one hundred bucks is, well, not. I don’t think the other moms have realized that we cannot afford to get an item for each member of the class, so some kids will be stuck with putting on one shoe or one sock or one glove, just to stretch the clothes and our budget.

I decided to go to the Goodwill clearance center, which is very different from a regular Goodwill store, to look for the roughly fifty things we need. At a regular Goodwill store, the clothing is organized in some sort of fashion. Belts, purses, ties, and hats hang from pegs on the walls. Clothing is categorized by gender and almost even by size. Shoes are in racks, and house wares and toys have their own area as well. It’s a bit like a TJ Maxx or Marshalls, except all used. Really used. They like to say gently used, but it looks like the difference between making sweet love and getting fucked hard in the dirty place.

If going to the regular Goodwill store is on the dirty side, then going to the clearance center is like sucking homeless guys’ dicks for a chance they might share their crack. Nothing is organized at all. Instead, it is all bins, rows and rows of bins of smelly, used, dirty clothes that wouldn’t sell at the regular store. Instead of a buck here or three dollars there, all the crap is sold by the pound, and it’s way less than the cold bar at Whole Foods. $7.99 might sound like a lot for marinated tofu cubes and orzo and spinach salad, but $1.29 for a scoop of shirts is a lot less appealing. I’ll take the orzo salad, please.

I walked around the bins, touching the clothing gingerly as if it were all covered in lice, which it probably was. I stopped touching when I thought about the lice thing, and just circled the bins as if the articles I needed would magically spring forth and fold themselves neatly before my very eyes. The other patrons had big tubs on wheels, lined with clear garbage bags, and were filling their bags in earnest. I looked around and thought, what am I doing here? This is not my neighborhood at all, and stepping out of my comfort zone was only serving to make me uncomfortable.

I gave up trying to pretend I was going to buy anything, even though everyone else knew I wasn’t. I went out and sat in my car, then coated all my exposed skin with an entire bottle of hand sanitizer. So, yes, I am a classist. One of those Obama elitists. A socio-economic snob. I do not relate well to the common man. I don’t want to eat a burger and fries. I don’t want to drink a Budweiser. I don’t want to drive a Chevy. I don’t want to watch a NASCAR race. I do not want to “Get ‘Er Done.” And I especially do not want to scrounge around in bins of clothing detritus looking for a bargain for the PTA.

I waited a week before I attempted again to go to Goodwill , this time a traditional store, which was less disgusting and also encouraged bilingual communication. I tore through that place, grabbing as much as I could find in fifteen minutes or less. I had my friend SF with me, which was great because we doubled our frenzied efforts and made it out in record time, which really impressed the old ladies in line behind us. We didn’t even have to hold our breath to not smell anything, although the hand sanitizer at the end was still a necessity.

I had my share of trips to Goodwill in my younger years, for Halloween costumes or what I perceived as vintage clothes, but I never had to shop there because I didn’t have a choice. I recognize that even in the lean years, I was lucky, and I am still lucky. Goodwill is there for a reason, and it isn’t just to amuse our children, in honor of them passing fifth grade and leaving elementary school.

And seriously, we don’t pay our teachers enough to dress up in used crap. If I were a teacher, I would refuse to have one of those hats on my heads, not to mention the used shoes shoved on my hoofs. Just writing this essay made me get up and wash my hands twice. I even scrubbed under my nails.