Volkswagon Summer Post #3

By Kimberly Jensen

The van stayed outside of the garage for all of the nieghbors, my friends, and future boyfriends to see while my mom went back to work inside the garage. Tables were set up, shelves were built, labels were made and items were priced. She put me in charge of the garage sale signs that would direct every undesirable from the main highway, to our street and then to our house. I was not allowed to leave the premises the following Friday and Saturday. I was put in charge of watching my little brother keeping him out of the way of traffic that was sure to hit rush-hour limits by 8am from the flashing neon signs we had nailed to traffic light posts the night before. When I was younger, I loved the annual garage sale. I even made cookies and punch and sold it from a cardboard table in the driveway. Now that I was in high school, it was unbearable.
The next morning I got up and threw on a pair of orange gym shorts, a matching t-shirt and flip flops. Craig had not yet stumbled from his bedroom so I wandered out to the garage to see what kind of crazies would come look at somebody else's throwaways at 8am on a Friday morning. My sister Linda was already there, selling muffins she had baked the day before and pouring iceless lemondae into Dixie cups. She was only two years younger than me but she was barely in junior high school and I was just too old and cool to hang out with her anymore. She was born with deep blue eyes and curly blonde hair that always came out of the pink sponge rollers bouncing like tufts of cotton candy. I was not so lucky. My brown, straight hair always looked like I had crawled out of a haystack and my bangs were always just a touch too long, causing me to constantly brush them out of my eyes. "Umph," I said as I walked past her cardboard table full of muffins and started browsing the perfectly lined tables my mother had been setting up for the last couple of weeks. "Mom! you can't put these out here!" I yelled as I grabbed three pairs of my last year's underwear and shoved them tight as a ball into my fist. "What sweetie," my mom answered as she walked over to see what I was making such a fuss about. "These, they're my underwear. You can't sell these...what if somebody comes in that I know and they know they're mine!" I said not believing that my mom would sell used underwear. "Oh, they are perfectly fine. They've been washed and dried and they look as good as new. Nobody is going to know they were yours," she said, taking them from my hand and folding them once again into a perfect square. She walked away and I grabbed them, stole a muffin from my sister and ran back into the house. I heard Linda squeal that I owed her 25 cents. I shoved the muffin into my mouth and fell down onto the couch. "I swear my family is the weirdest on the planet. First the van and now used underwear? What could be next?" I said outloud as I shoved the underwear into the couch cushions next to Gidget, our cat.