Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner by Jen Lancaster Page A
Authors: Jen Lancaster
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of passively going along with the process, I become an active participant. The second the “You’ve been outbid!” e-mail arrives in my in-box, I’m on it, jacking up my bid ceiling in increments of ten dollars to flush out the lookie-loos.
Yet I still lose auctions.
I imagine elaborate sting operations wherein all the owners of vintage leather catcher’s masks band together to create an evilcabal whose sole purpose is to keep me from winning their items. Dicks.
When I spy the potential cornerstone of my collection—a small sterling trophy from the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, recognizing Hunky, the 1907 winner of Class Dories competition, shit gets real.
The time has come for spite bidding.
I set my bid ceiling ridiculously high and systematically knock out all the competition. I have no idea who the other bidders are in real life—perhaps a relative of Hunky or a historian tasked with bringing home all the Seawanhaka trophies, but I care not. That trophy is going to sit on my empty shelf, holding a hydrangea blossom when seasonally appropriate, and that’s all there is to it. As the time on the auction runs out, it’s five… four… three… two… one…
#WINNING!!!
Once I discover a system in which I get the items I want
and
piss off a faceless portion of the Internet, I’m unstoppable. I win auctions left and right. Vintage hockey skates? Got ’em. Small tin sign indicating where the polo club served cocktails? All over it. Antique Indian juggling clubs? Yeah, baby. Old-timey football helmets? Enough to protect the tender melons of the entire starting line, thank you very much.
Fletch doesn’t even balk at what I spend because ultimately a first-place ribbon from the Iowa State Fair for Shorthorn Cattle costs substantially less than shoes, jewelry, purses, or anything purchased on an Ambien high. Plus, I’m working out a lot of aggression by crushing other people’s auction dreams. And, if someone out there has to sell her pair of 1952 Wilson Football cleats(with original box!) in order to cover her light bill, I’m happy to pay it forward.
Ironically, what puts him over the edge about my hobby is the packing peanuts. Thus I’d like to present How to Make Fletch Apoplectic in Ten Easy Steps:
1. Spend two weeks spite-bidding on a bunch of random, delicate, heavily packaged items.
2. Accidentally win every single item due to the aforementioned spite bidding.
3. Attempt to open the boxes of shipped items with a tablespoon. [
Hey, it was the most handy pointy thing.
]
4. Be so excited about the random, delicate items deeply ensconced in packing peanuts that you simply abandon the empty husks of boxes all over the kitchen.
5. Completely forget about the packing peanuts while you arrange your snappy vintage Brownie cameras and croquet balls and cricket bats.
6. Have Fletch fill one entire industrial-sized garbage can with packing peanuts.
7. Suddenly become bored with antiquing on the first sunny day of spring and decide gardening is your new hobby, and thus it’s imperative to start planting now, now, now!
8. Accidentally knock over previously mentioned garbage can while backing out of the garage in your haste to get to Lowe’s to buy geraniums.
9. Return home to find white substance spread over 1.2 acres, prompting you to ask, “Did it hail or something?”
10. Bray like a jackass upon discovering those thousands of little blobs are free-range Styrofoam and then wish Fletch a Happy Earth Day.
Fletch has now begged me to reconsider both gardening and antiquing as hobbies, instead opting for something less competitive/messy/expensive.
He suggests sewing.
Sewing?
Huh. That’s a thought. I have lots of friends who sew and I love seeing the stuff they create. My friend Wendy is an ace and her basement’s so well stocked it’s like visiting a tailor.
This… might be useful. With some practice, I could whip up some casual, more modern curtains for the bedroom to replace those
Yet I still lose auctions.
I imagine elaborate sting operations wherein all the owners of vintage leather catcher’s masks band together to create an evilcabal whose sole purpose is to keep me from winning their items. Dicks.
When I spy the potential cornerstone of my collection—a small sterling trophy from the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, recognizing Hunky, the 1907 winner of Class Dories competition, shit gets real.
The time has come for spite bidding.
I set my bid ceiling ridiculously high and systematically knock out all the competition. I have no idea who the other bidders are in real life—perhaps a relative of Hunky or a historian tasked with bringing home all the Seawanhaka trophies, but I care not. That trophy is going to sit on my empty shelf, holding a hydrangea blossom when seasonally appropriate, and that’s all there is to it. As the time on the auction runs out, it’s five… four… three… two… one…
#WINNING!!!
Once I discover a system in which I get the items I want
and
piss off a faceless portion of the Internet, I’m unstoppable. I win auctions left and right. Vintage hockey skates? Got ’em. Small tin sign indicating where the polo club served cocktails? All over it. Antique Indian juggling clubs? Yeah, baby. Old-timey football helmets? Enough to protect the tender melons of the entire starting line, thank you very much.
Fletch doesn’t even balk at what I spend because ultimately a first-place ribbon from the Iowa State Fair for Shorthorn Cattle costs substantially less than shoes, jewelry, purses, or anything purchased on an Ambien high. Plus, I’m working out a lot of aggression by crushing other people’s auction dreams. And, if someone out there has to sell her pair of 1952 Wilson Football cleats(with original box!) in order to cover her light bill, I’m happy to pay it forward.
Ironically, what puts him over the edge about my hobby is the packing peanuts. Thus I’d like to present How to Make Fletch Apoplectic in Ten Easy Steps:
1. Spend two weeks spite-bidding on a bunch of random, delicate, heavily packaged items.
2. Accidentally win every single item due to the aforementioned spite bidding.
3. Attempt to open the boxes of shipped items with a tablespoon. [
Hey, it was the most handy pointy thing.
]
4. Be so excited about the random, delicate items deeply ensconced in packing peanuts that you simply abandon the empty husks of boxes all over the kitchen.
5. Completely forget about the packing peanuts while you arrange your snappy vintage Brownie cameras and croquet balls and cricket bats.
6. Have Fletch fill one entire industrial-sized garbage can with packing peanuts.
7. Suddenly become bored with antiquing on the first sunny day of spring and decide gardening is your new hobby, and thus it’s imperative to start planting now, now, now!
8. Accidentally knock over previously mentioned garbage can while backing out of the garage in your haste to get to Lowe’s to buy geraniums.
9. Return home to find white substance spread over 1.2 acres, prompting you to ask, “Did it hail or something?”
10. Bray like a jackass upon discovering those thousands of little blobs are free-range Styrofoam and then wish Fletch a Happy Earth Day.
Fletch has now begged me to reconsider both gardening and antiquing as hobbies, instead opting for something less competitive/messy/expensive.
He suggests sewing.
Sewing?
Huh. That’s a thought. I have lots of friends who sew and I love seeing the stuff they create. My friend Wendy is an ace and her basement’s so well stocked it’s like visiting a tailor.
This… might be useful. With some practice, I could whip up some casual, more modern curtains for the bedroom to replace those
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