We have been looking for a piano for ages. The price for a piano seems to range from about $1.37 to $43,000. I have extensive background in pianos, meaning I know they are chiefly made up of a bunch of white keys and then a gaggle of little black keys sprinkled haphazardly over the keyboard. When you poke at a one of the keys, or ''teeth,'' as we say in the piano biz, the piano emits a sound. This is called music.
There are all kinds of pianos but they all share one basic characteristic: they are extremely heavy and hard to move. There are upright pianos, not-so-upright pianos, pianos with shadowy pasts, grand pianos, baby grand pianos, fetus grand pianos and pianos with visions of grandeur.
If you are looking for a piano, you will find that the harder you look, the more expensive they get. If you aren't looking for a piano, you will immediately notice one in the classified section of the newspaper for sale for about $247 and a McDonald's ''Free Arch Deluxe'' coupon. (We're talking used pianos here, obviously. No one buys new pianos except rich men given to wearing lavender shirts with long, frilly sleeves.)
If you find a reasonably priced piano in the paper and call that number, your call is met by indignant laughter, seeing as how the piano was sold 12 minutes after the newspaper hit the streets.
Knowing this, I didn't jump up and down when I saw a piano for sale for $500 in a recent newspaper. But I did call the guy and he said it was still for sale. On the day of the garage sale, we drove across the island to see it, even though we knew it would be futile.
When we reached the house, it turned out that we actually knew the wife of the couple that owned the piano. She called to her husband to show us the piano. He said he had another couple at hand who also wanted to view it. We walked into the house. Out of courtesy we let the other (older) couple enter first.
SINCE we knew the owners, we knew the piano was in excellent shape and being sold for a good price. The older couple asked some serious piano-related questions while I quickly scanned the instrument. Yes, it seemed to have all the requisite splatter of white and black keys.
"We'll take it!'' I announced, figuring a preemptive strike was called for. The other couple blanched. We were told that the other couple had technically arrived at the sale 10 minutes before we had. And they had entered the house first.
Now, this is the closest I had come to having a shot at buying a piano and I wasn't going to let it go on a couple of vague technicalities. Yes, the other couple had entered the house first, but that was just because the door wasn't wide enough to allow us all to hop across the threshold together. And in fact, I had actually called about the piano a day earlier.
The other couple was shocked at my failure to abide by their idea of garage sale etiquette. But I wouldn't budge. In the end, we agreed to flip a coin. I even let the other couple call it. They lost.
In the driveway, I apologized to the couple for the way things worked out, but the wife began crying and said, "You are only making it worse.'' Then they climbed into their Mercedes and drove away.
I don't think we were wrong in the way we handled the situation. But I'd be interested in knowing if there actually are some rules to garage sale negotiations. If there are, let me know. In the meantime, I've got to poke some teeth.
