18 March 2011

This Week in Thrifting Scores (and a question about ethnic slurs...)

I go to thrift stores on Thursdays. Not every Thursday. Probably 2 out of 3 Thursdays on average. I don't always buy something, but I usually do. (This might be part of the reason that the hypothetical prospect of living in a basement-less, garage-less 2-bedroom apartment is freaking me out a little...)

This week we checked out the new Goodwill store in Norman. It's at E 12th and Alameda, across from the Mazzio's, in there. I just spotted it on Monday, so I have no idea how long it's been there, or if they closed the other one in town, although I know they closed the one in Moore.

It's nice! It's pretty big, lots of space, and things are pretty well organized. The books are organized by genre, and the fiction is organized alphabetically by author's last name! This is practically unheard of in thrift-store-dom.

I picked up all of the following for a little over $10.

[Adorable footie pajamas. Not flame-retardant! Woohoo!]

[A Scrabble game (missing 7 tiles) and a Clue game (missing all the little metal pieces! Gypped!!). But the Clue game has this cool 1979 board.]

[A tie for Norman -- oddly cool.]

[A tie for crafting -- Fox hunt!!]

[Three books -- one of which I had been looking for, and two which I didn't know I had been looking for. I'll leave you to sort out which is which.]


This now means that my "to read" pile looks like this:
[Ridunkulous. "Buried Alive", indeed!]

Side question: is the use of the verb "to gyp" (as in to rip someone off, to give someone less than what they expected or paid for) offensive? I know it originally referred to Gypsies, but I don't think of it that way. Does it strike you as an ethnic slur?

5 comments:

GrandmaToots said...

"...garage-less, basement-less, 2 bedroom apartment..." Welcome to my world!

sseachris said...

Gyp??? That is so funny because I always thought it was "jip" or "jipped". I was even an English major! I love word origins.

Brigid said...

I've read TCOYF and really enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your thoughts when you finish it.

I quit saying "gypped" because of the racial-slur interpretation of it. To be fair, I think the term Gypsy itself is probably somewhat offensive, as the ethnic group is called Roma/Romani. Not knowing anyone of that group, however, I cannot say how offensive either term is, so I just try not to use the words.

Jennifer said...

I think I heard that goodwill has been there about 2 years. (apparently journey church was in that building before that.) that store was quite fruitful for all of my halloween costumes this past year, so I'm a fan.

Jennifer said...

also forgot to add that as a quarter blood romanian, I don't find the term "gypsie" offensive, but I'm also not a good representative of the culture. I think it should be more offensive than it is. I wish I still had some grandparents alive to ask this question...