Sold to the Lady in Lavender

I went to an antique auction yesterday, and several people bid on me.

Now, before you think I’ve taken up tap-dancing in my twilight years or started a side hustle as a novelty garden gnome, let me explain. I wasn’t supposed to be for sale. I just sat down in the wrong chair, and things got out of hand.

See, I was tagging along with my neighbor Martha, who collects things like Depression glass, Civil War buttons, and husbands. She’s on her third, I think, but only the second one to have all his teeth.

Martha told me to come for the “entertainment,” which I figured meant folks waving paddles around and overpaying for butter churns. I didn’t expect to be the entertainment.

The auction was in the back of an old feed store, which still smelled faintly of alfalfa and mouse panic. They’d cleared out the sacks and set up rows of folding chairs.

I wandered around, admiring a cracked phonograph and a velvet painting of a very nervous-looking Elvis, then decided to sit down and rest my knees. That was my first mistake.

It turns out the auctioneer was auctioning off the chair I sat in—an “authentic 19th-century Victorian oak with carved claw feet,” which was a fancy way of saying it was wobbly and had probably killed a few unsuspecting sitters in its time.

I must’ve blended in well because the next thing I know, the auctioneer’s rattling off numbers like a caffeinated auction rooster, “Do I hear twenty? Twenty-five? Thirty from the lady in lavender!”

Now, Martha was wearing lavender, and she had that glint in her eye. I gave her a look meant to say, “Don’t you dare,” but it must’ve read, “Why yes, I am available and reasonably priced,” because she raised her paddle again.

The auctioneer shouted, “We’re at forty! Forty-five?” and a man in suspenders on the other side of the room nodded solemnly like he was bidding on a prized dairy cow, which I was beginning to feel like. Next thing I know, it’s up to seventy-five dollars, and I’m trying to stand up and declare that I ain’t included with the furniture, but the chair’s has me hostage—one of its claw feet had snagged my pant cuff.

“Sold!” the auctioneer bellowed. “To the lady in lavender for eighty-five dollars!”

There was a smattering of applause, and a few folks clapped me on the shoulder like I’d just won the blue ribbon at the fair. Martha leaned over and whispered, “Best deal I’ve ever made. You come with stories and don’t take up too much space.”

I eventually got untangled from the chair, though it took the help of a man who claimed to be a retired rodeo clown and carried a pocketknife big enough to field dress a moose. I offered to refund Martha her eighty-five bucks, but she waved me off and said, “Nah, I’ll just write you off as a charitable donation.”

So now I’m technically an antique, which might explain the creaking joints and my affinity for butterscotch candies. And while I’m not for sale—yet—I’ve started eyeing my furniture with a little more suspicion.

Next time, I’m bringing a folding chair and a “Not for Auction” sign to hang around my neck, just in case.