They say that life is funny, but I’m here to tell you that it is only funny looking back.
At least that is true when I think about my first experience at an auction.
The first auction I ever attended was in Chandler, Oklahoma. My good friend JB heard about it and took me. The first one was fun to watch, but I went home and looked at our old, tiny refrigerator and realized I could buy one at a great discount by getting it at auction. The next week I got to the auction early and waited for an interesting refrigerator to come to the front.
Finally the auction brought out a glorious, huge, brown refrigerator. The bidding started and I could not believe it was going so cheap. By being patient and smarter than everyone else, I bought it for the ridiculous price of $50. Of course that was in 1968 dollars, but still cheap, cheap, cheap!
The next day and borrowed a friends pickup truck and retrieved my prize. Bringing the brown fridge into our kitchen change everything. I plugged in the my “new” cool box, transferred all our food (or had Liz do it), and then while I still had the truck, carried off the old fridge to a friends house. I was nice enough to give it away.
In a couple of hours, I went to get a cool drink out of my new kitchen wonder. I discovered that the new, old, refrigerator did a great job of keeping everything at a perfect temperature, well, a perfect room temperature.
The next day Liz and I had to go to a real store and buy an expensive new refrigerator. I took the brown prize back to the same auction the next week. I managed to lose only $20, two nights of time, and a tank of gas for the friends pickup.
I’d like to say I learned not to do auctions anymore, but there are other stores which show that is not so. I am so bad at auctions that Liz speeds up when she drives by an auction. I’m even scared of eBay.
The truth is that life is often funny only we look back. Sometimes it is not even funny when you look back.