The Best Things in Life are...free.

My mother and I loved to drop into antique shops and follow “Garage sale” signs when I was growing up, satisfying our shared addictions of hidden treasures and good discounts. My sister was not as enthusiastic as my mother and me, but she indulged our imaginations and was generally a good sport, if not quite as willing to lose a day as we were on our own. Any time the three of us girls were out of town together without my dad, we would go to any antique shop, thrift store, garage or estate sale we could find until whatever appointment we were in town for or we got too hungry to wait.

Back then, thrifting and antiquing was less about the result and more about the experience. Sometimes, the best times, a town would have 4 or 5 different antique stores within walking distance and my dad would be visiting job sites all day. We would spend the whole day wandering the aisles, combing through the crowded shelves, breathing in the scent of old furniture and newspaper, and mentally calculating the difference between secret treasure and old junk until it was time for lunch, and then venture out again with fresh eyes. There was nothing quite like the feeling of finding a little bauble or accessory and hunting for your companions among the scattered aisles to show them your treasure, then speculating about the age, value, history and future of whatever little mystery you'd discovered.

We even fantasized about writing an edu-tainment book series featuring the imagined adventures of a mom and her two daughters living a day-in-the-life of the owners of wildly improbable historical items they find hidden among the riffraff of different antique shops - a steamer trunk that carried an immigrant’s whole life across the Atlantic on the ship that rescued the Titanic survivors, a piece of farming equipment lying useless during the Dust Bowl, a now-empty perfume bottle lined with the signature scent of some unknown flapper or society lady or robber-baron's mistress. When I was about eleven, I wrote the first three pages of the first book in a spiral notebook and curly, not-quite-but-almost cursive junior high handwriting. It is still three pages long, sitting in the desk drawer in my childhood bedroom, but we sure had fun planning the many sequels during road trips.

Over the years, I have convinced my parents to buy me, and then bought myself once I had first allowance then real income, many treasures of varying real-life worth. I was sure my entire adolescence, for example, that adult-me would someday own a home in which I would decorate one spare bedroom (multiple spare bedrooms, can you imagine? In this economy?) with interesting antique hats. Perhaps other accessories, perhaps beaded purses and satin gloves and decorative perfume bottles with the little squeeze-balls and antique furniture, but definitely hats. To this day, dear reader, I am 31 years old, I live in a 1-bedroom apartment just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, with embarrassing and stressful credit card and student loan debt and my first real curtains less than 6 months old, and I have 11 antique hats sitting on top of a $30 fabric closet, waiting to be artfully displayed in some 40-something-year-old moderately successful novelist’s 3.5-bedroom brick country home just outside of some suburb, far enough into the country to have horses but close enough to town to order delivery. This does not include “modern” hats of any kind or the unknown number of hats that are still in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house, waiting for their own room. If anyone has an 800-number for this kind of situation, I would gladly accept the suggestion.

Some finds proved more usable, however, and I have had pretty remarkable success given my absolutely amateur but incredibly enthusiastic approach to thrifting. Among the highlights are:

Michael Jackson jacket - I don’t know if there is actually anything at all “Michael Jackson”-y about it, but it feels cool and edgy and kinda rock-and-roll, but with strong hints of 'high school marching band' that make me feel like I’m still in my league.

Brand-name skirts for cheap - I began my professional career as a ballroom dance instructor at a high-end metropolitan studio. Like most people probably, I had to buy a whole new work wardrobe before I really started making any money. Unlike most people, I also had to look professional, and at the same time luxurious and unattainably sexy and interesting, and to be able to dance a Tango in my work clothes. Stretchy pencil skirts and fun patterns with brands that my rich clients would recognize were particularly valuable.

White Ostrich-feather shoulder shrug - This is one of my favorites. Bless my mother for indulging my fashion imagination instead of insisting on practicality. Also curse her for it, because I own probably 6 or 7 items that have yet to find their calling for every 1 that was, like this shoulder shrug, purchased on a dream with no planned use and then ended up a perfect match for some unknown future need.

But, you know, maybe someday. Or maybe the ones collecting dust are necessary to have the ones that get to fulfill their destiny. I dunno. Whatever. This shrug is beautiful. I was instantly in love. I wore it over a white Grecian-inspired gown for a wear-white formal New Year’s party at work, and it was gorgeous, but that wasn’t it’s true destiny. No, the reason that fate drew me into that little antique shop was for the day, about a year later, that I would perform a waltz routine with a student at a “Hollywood”-themed showcase to Dinah Washington’s version of “Fly Me to the Moon”. I wore my beautiful ostrich-feather shoulder shrug over a powder-pink mermaid gown with movie-star curls and red lipstick and I felt like a goddess of Old Hollywood glamour.

And still, the shrug is the runner-up here. More honorable mentions below.

$1 glass coffee table - I offered a guy at a flea market $1 as a joke for a beautiful but slightly broken gold coffee table with a glass top, because I was in love with it but didn’t have a way to take it home. He accepted my offer and we’ve had it for 8 years.

Naked cherub lamp base - this is another flea market purchase, the base of an old kerosene lamp without the glass shade. It is stupid and beautiful and I love it.

Strawberry breakfast condiment bowl - I decided about 9 years ago that I wanted to decorate my kitchen with strawberries. Since then I, and my mom and sister and my husband and my husband's mother, have bought any vaguely kitchen-like items with strawberries we happen across. This is one of my favorites.

Lace up old-fashioned ice skates that were just a little bit too small - I don’t have a photo as I got rid of them years ago. My mom tried to talk me out of them, but I insisted they fit well enough. I loved them. I wore them once for ice skating, and they were warm enough to wear for the idea of skating, but not the reality of skating. More of an Instagram accessory than useful winter item, before Instagram was a thing. Very cute though.

Many, many Halloween costume pieces - Pictured below: hat, dress, shirt and scarf for Madeline; everything except the boots for Carmen Sandiego; and peasant top and shawl for Renaissance Festival outfit. Not pictured but loved: blue robe for Katara of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." My husband went as Zuko. We looked adorable. #Zutara

A beautiful but absolutely unnecessary white wire birdcage that will live in my imaginary hat room someday, and served as the card box at both my and my sister’s wedding.

But this story isn’t really about any of those. This story is about something much stupider, much simpler and much more meaningful. The absolute best thing I have ever acquired in a thrift shop, antique store or garage sale was a home-made craft item that my now-husband and I acquired for free with an important but boring and practical purchase. This item is absolutely ugly and entirely useless, and I will keep it and display it until the day I die.

His name is “Googly eyes”.

When my now-husband, then-boyfriend of 5 years and I first moved in together, we rented a studio apartment with at least 4 coats of pumpkin-guts-colored paint and no insulation for $425 a month. We had no furniture and two small kitties to provide for as we built our life together. We bought ourselves a nice new mattress and everything else as cheap as possible.

We bought two flimsy wooden dressers at a garage sale for $10. We inherited a set of dishes that my mother found at a garage sale for my sister, who then didn’t like the color. And we bought a pair of truly ugly armchairs - green, white, yellow and black-striped, tweed-ish material, the kind that can spin and rock back on its base with the sort of bedskirt-type bottom -- for $45.

My then-boyfriend, Aaron, had negotiated the price down from I think $30 apiece, and we still hadn’t wanted to spend quite that much but felt bad asking for any lower. On a sweet but meaningless impulse to try to get a bit more for our money, my future husband asked the garage sale proprietor to include for free a homemade yarn-art wall hanging that was draped over the back of one chair. The hawkish businesswoman readily agreed. We had our solutions to sitting on the floor all the time, and what would become our first collective property and prized possession.

This object, this pinnacle of my life’s thrifting and yard-sale-scouting, is a yarn-art wall hanging with a picture of what I can only describe as the type of old fisherman in a “Chicken Soup for the Soul”-type story who lives in a lighthouse after his wife passes away and learns the true meaning of happiness from a boy and his dog, somehow. After we acquired it, we immediately hung it on the wall in our bed/living/dining/furnace room. He hung there for months, watching, witnessing our lives. And then, one day, Aaron for some reason that I can’t remember had a pair of self-adhesive googly eyes, the kind you would use for a children’s craft at summer camp. He stuck them to the old yarn man, and his place in our lives was forever assured.

He has accompanied us to five apartments in two states and will follow us to any home, any place, any level of professional and financial success that we achieve for the rest of our lives. He is an infallible source of laughter, a unique conversation piece with family and friends, an inside joke and a symbol of spontaneity, resourcefulness and lightheartedness. He reminds us of our young partnership, when we’d been dating for years but had just really begun our lives together, and the joys and trials of that phase of our relationship and our lives.

He reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously.

He reminds us that function is more important than appearance, and happiness is more important than either.

He reminds us that anything can be special if you make it your own.

And he reminds me of why I love my husband and why he loves me, and why we’re gonna be OK, no matter what life throws at us. I love my husband for a lot of reasons, but one of the deepest is that he is unique, and interesting, and hilarious in a way that still catches me off-guard after 14 years together. I will never be bored and I will never get boring as long as I am around him. I love him because he is creative and intelligent in a way that is unlike anyone else I've ever met. I love him because he both makes me feel totally at home and yet doesn’t quite make sense to me, which is important in keeping my interest for the next 10, 20, and 80 years. The silliness and absurdity and pure, impractical pleasure of acquiring and displaying Googly Eyes reminds me of all of that. I am so grateful that I am the kind of person, and that I live with the kind of person, who would buy, keep, display, decorate, name, and enjoy Googly Eyes.

Someday, when we live in a mansion or a beach house or a castle in Europe or a cabin in the woods or a crappy apartment in Manhattan or Boise or Moscow or on Mars, the trappings of our lives will look totally different. But I know we will still have Googly Eyes hanging on the wall somewhere, to remind us of where we came from and to enjoy the absurdity of life, for better or worse. Thank you, Googly Eyes, and thank you to the garage sale lady who offloaded a dud item and unwittingly gave us years of laughter and love.