Garage Sale

Today I want to write about something that happened to me as a child that, for some reason, I still think about from time to time. It's really nothing significant or traumatic, in fact it's actually an incredibly petty quasi-argument that I got into with my older sister one day, stemming from a verbal miscommunication.

It all started with a neighborhood garage sale. I was probably around 12 years old at the time and I loved it when our whole subdivision would have these garage sales because my parents told me I could put any of my possessions that I didn't want or need up for sale. I got to name the price and reap the financial rewards. Tax-free, cash-only transactions, all being done off the grid. I loved it. On a good garage sale day I could rake in $30-50, all in exchange for toys or video games that I had pretty much abandoned anyway. The day before the garage sale I remember organizing my merchandise and placing little sharpie price tags on each item. Being influenced by the price tags I saw at stores, I didn't price any of my stuff at an even dollar amount. A Nintendo 64 game would be priced at $9.99, or an action figure for $3.99. After having applied these sorts of price tags to 75% of my merchandise, my mom noticed what I was doing and explained to me that this was absolutely ridiculous. But, because I was too lazy to go through and put a new sticker on everything, I turned the ".99" into a ".00". This effectively cut all my prices by $1 but I didn't really care. So, on the morning of the garage sale I was in the kitchen and my whole family was meandering in and out of the house and setting up tables in our driveway. At this point my older sister Ashley came inside and began making a cardboard box with a small slit in it to hold the cash that we would make from our sales. And our argument began with a simple question on my part.

"Hey, so are we each going to get our own cash box?", I asked.

"There will be a box for everybody", she replied.

I didn't understand if she meant that there would be one box, shared by everybody or if there would be one box for each individual person. Her phrasing was a little unclear to me.

Just to clarify, I asked "So, we'll each have our own box?"

And, instead of rearranging her words to be less ambiguous and communicating effectively with me, she just said the same exact damn sentence that she had said before, but this time with an annoyed tone.

"There will be a box for everybody!"

I realized I must not have understood her upon my first try, leading me to believe that she meant we'd all be sharing one box.

So I said, "Ok. So, we'll all be sharing that one box?"

What happened next was astounding. Even though this time I had properly interpreted her poorly chosen words, she replied with the same exact fucking sentence. Except that this time it was even louder and angrier.

"THERE WILL BE A BOX FOR EVERYBODY!"

At this point I just left and went outside because I didn't know why she was being so irritable and I didn't want to deal with it. But, I still think about this little interaction we had and I wished I'd stayed in that kitchen and argued with her because I really don't think I was out of line. I mean, maybe I was partly at fault for not interpreting what she said correctly, but I don't think she handled the situation well at all. What kind of communication strategy is that? To just yell the same sentence at someone louder and angrier each time. Like that's the problem? Yeah, maybe I didn't understand what she meant because it just wasn't hollered at me with enough zeal. I mean, what the fuck? I don't even know if she remembers this. She probably doesn't and she probably shouldn't. This is one of those weird memories I have where I'm not sure why I've held onto it for so long. But, whenever I relive it in my mind I get angry at my sister all over again. I just want to call her up and confront her about it. "A box for everybody, a box for everybody! I GET IT! We were all gonna share one box! You didn't have to be such a bitch about it. It was garage sale day, for christ's sake. One of the best days ever! How could you be anything but happy? What was up your ass?" But, I never make that phone call because I'm pretty sure she would have no clue what I was talking about.