Do you remember your first?

Do you remember your first ebay purchase?

(Mitchel Robertson lll   1928    Hingham, Mass.)

I'll never forget mine.

I typed in chinoiserie and there she was!  It was love at first sight.  I opened an ebay account and placed my bid.  There weren't options like "maximum bid" or services like "bid snipe" then.  Looking back it was all so straight forward.  I kept vigilant watch over the auction for days.  When the final hour was at hand I sat in front of my computer with butterflies in my stomach as the final seconds ticked away.  Suddenly it was over and she was mine!  I was overjoyed!  The sweet smell of success was intoxicating.  The next morning I received an email asking me if I wanted to sell the monkey!

I was confused!  I opened the email to discover that someone in San Francisco was offering to buy my chinoiserie monkey  that I had just won but had yet to receive!  I emailed back and asked them why they wanted my monkey.  They replied that they had her mate which they had purchased from the same seller a few months earlier.  I asked why they hadn't bid on her and they said they had been out of town and missed out on participating in the auction.  My response to them was,  NO...  but did they want to sell their monkey?  They said NO. 

So, my sweet chinoiserie monkey resides with us in Alameda while her mate lives 20 minutes away in the City by the Bay.