I'm offended. I'm hurt. (Excuse me while I dry my eyes.)

Deep breath. OK. I can talk now.

I love writing these columns on garage sales and I'm thrilled The Republic prints them each Friday. But I gotta tell you I'm appalled, outright disgusted, by a column one of The Republic's community editions published recently. Gosh, I just don't know how it made it past the editors.

It ran a couple weeks ago in The Chandler Republic titled, "If it's Saturday, it must be a garage sale." The author was Andrew Schwartzberg - a garage sale . . . (sob) ... hater.

Some excerpts: "There is something about garage sales I find just a little bit unsettling. . . . Somehow the notion of paying money for somebody else's junk just doesn't sit well with me. . . . And what of the person whose stuff you're going through? Are they selling you items contaminated with bubonic plague? . . . Creepy."

OK, OK, so the humor columnist doesn't like garage sales. We get it. But, hey, Andrew, I've been there, too. I was once a garage-sale snob. I was reformed, however, when I went to my first sale and bought an old copper boiler. I love that thing. So, Andrew, if you want to experience the "high" of finding a great treasure for mere pennies, I offer some advice for battling your troubling phobia:

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