The best sister story

Allison and I have a lot of good stories. Like the time I was swinging her in a bed sheet tied underneath our playhouse, the knots came undone, and she went flying.

Or the time she used her McDonald's toy bullhorn to forlornly announce that we had just left Kings Island without riding a single ride because someone (me) had a terrible case of swimmer's ear.

Pretty much everything on our sisters' Chicago trip back in 2004 was funny. Allison had to go without her contacts our last day there, and I had to guide Miss Blind-as-a-Bat around town like a service dog--telling her when the dolphins were jumping at the Shedd; saving her from running into an oncoming bike rider head-on.

And of course, there was the afternoon we ran errands for her wedding shower and everything that could go wrong did; from the cake melting in the car while we waited two hours for a lunch of egg whites and crabcakes, to opening a box of 40 cupcakes to find they'd been covered in Thanksgiving-colored sprinkles and looked like they'd been baked in the back of a speeding food truck.

Then there was our most recent sisters' weekend in Bloomington. Someone (her) made appointments to get our hair cut with our on-again/off-again college stylist...except she wasn't available, so we went with a newbie. And boy, was she a newbie. She looked more at the People magazine in Allison's lap than at her locks, all the while saying she really didn't want to be a stylist; she was just doing it to earn some money. (First rule of beauty school: Never, ever admit to hating your job when you've just chopped off three inches of your client's hair.) Long story short, Allison and I walked around B-town (during Welcome Week, when 18-year-old hotness abounds, no less!) looking like we'd been slapped across the face with a wet squirrel.

We made up for it with bubbly mimosas, laughing over the funniest animal-shelter ads, some fabulous thrift store finds, and trying to convince each other that our hair "wasn't that bad."

But because Allison had spent $100 to my $29--and because she's always been the one with cojones--we went back to the salon three hours later, and our on-again stylist fixed her botched hair to silky, layered, highlighted perfection while I read a lot of magazines from February 2009 and scavenged for leftover crackers in my bag. (I know, I need to take a note from Allison and grow a spine.)



And yet, we somehow topped all of our sister stories combined just one week later, thanks to The Alligator Purse.

This past weekend, our grandma finally auctioned off everything (well, nearly everything--there's still the biggest barn to go through) that wasn't nailed down. And it was a LOT of stuff--three tents and two afternoons of I-gotta-dollar-who'll-give-me-fives' worth. Eight years of stopping at every yard sale, auction, and flea market in a three-state radius meant our grandparents' basement, extra 3-bedroom house, and two barns were filled to bursting with all sorts of odds and ends. Papaw was a collector of pretty much everything, from old toy trucks to aladdin lamps and the most random things you can think of, like old church pews and giant department store display cases. (When I saw them a few weekends ago, I thought they were 200-gallon fish tanks.)

It's funny, the attachment you suddenly have to things you never saw, or cared about--or, if we're being honest, down-right hated--until the moment someone you don't know is packing them up.

Take, for example, this:

Hideous much?

This gem of a handbag was my great-grandma's, given to her by my great-uncle, who lived in Florida. I don't remember her ever carrying it--maybe she thought alligator didn't complement purple-flowered mumus--but I do remember where it sat the past 28 years: Right on top of the old refrigerator in my grandma's basement. Its glinty amber eyes sacred me to death, and I saw it whenever I went to get some potatoes off the basement steps--which was just about every weekend until I was 4, and then every other weekend until I went to college. (I grew up on my grandma's boiled potatoes and still can't fix them the same way she does, even though I now own her potato pot.)

And yet, this creepy thing with intact claws and teeth is now sitting on my kitchen counter. Yes, that's right, I am the proud half-owner of The Alligator Purse. And I'm it in $22.50, when I could have taken it at any time, free of charge, for the past 28 years. Again: Funny, the attachment you suddenly have to things 90 seconds before they're sold. Because that's exactly how much time Allison and I had to get to the tent where 'ol leatherback here was put up to bid. I was in Grandma's house watching Evan when Allison ran in and frantically told me The Purse was in the auction. (Now, two weeks before, Grandma had asked if I wanted The Purse, and I said it could go to a landfill, for all I cared. But I didn't think she'd really toss it out.) 

And just like that, we had to save The Purse. I grabbed our buyer number from Nate, hurriedly asked him (without really listening) how to bid, ran to the tent, saw The Purse was up next, and waved my card high in the air as soon as the auctioneer grabbed it. He looked over at me, grinned, and yelled, "THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!" I wish someone had had a camera handy; I'd love to have seen the look on my face--I'm certain I turned 10 shades paler than my usual chalky self. I did see the look on Nate's face--a nice cross between sheer horror and bewilderment that his wife could be so stupid. Later, Allison's husband Justin asked which one of us was Tweedle-Dee and which was Tweedle-Dum.

In our mad dash to the tent, Allison and I had decided we'd bid up to $50--no more, but who's to say what we would have done?--and split the cost. Of course, as soon as The Purse became a hot item thanks to my non-existent poker face, others (specifically, one jackass who later said, "You know, you could have had that for free!") threw out bids, too. But we finally got it for $45. Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents' worth of bragging rights and the funniest memory of seeing our grandma's face when we triumphantly walked into the house, modeling The Purse like it was a yet-to-be-released Hermes bag and not some macabre reminder of how you could meet your end in the Everglades.

Like Papaw used to say, "One man's junk is another man's jewel." Our newly-acquired jewel will probably always give me the heebie-jeebies, but that's okay. I think Papaw would be proud of us for being a little sentimental when push came to shove. But if Heaven has auctions, I sure hope he shows us how to bid some day. We could use a few lessons.