Shopping Saturday: Shopping with my sister Debby

My sister, Debby, was the perfect one. She was 5'4" blond hair, blue eyes, the face of an angel and she weighed about 102 pounds dripping wet. She got straight A's in school. She was an accomplished concert and jazz pianist. She could also play the saxophone and the accordion. She married a lawyer and had two children (a boy and a girl... in that order).

I tell you this not so you will feel sorry for me, but so you will understand that it was all a facade. She had the face of an angel and the morals of a safe cracker.

Debby was a wild child (as my uncle used to say.) She was the one who cut class all the time. She drank and partied. I won't go into details (it's not nice to talk ill of the dead) but let it suffice to say she got caught playing Frisbee on the roof of a hotel once. Oh, and one time she dived into a swimming pool with her band uniform on...just because someone bet her she wouldn't.

So now that you have a picture of Debby let me tell you that this "personality" did not just suddenly show up when she was a teenager. Oh, no, my friends. Debby was like this her whole life.

Today we go shopping with Debby.

One of my most vivid memories of Debby is how she always managed to get me in trouble for something she did. I would always, somehow get the blame. AND I WAS THE GOOD GIRL.

Once when we were about 10 and 8 (Debby is the younger) we were with our mother shopping for new school clothes. There was only one dressing room in the little local store mom liked to buy our clothes from. So Debby and I were sharing a dressing room. I would put on a new dress and go out to model for Mom while Debby changed into her new dress. Then I would go back into the dressing room to put on another dress for Mom to see while Debby modeled.

Back and forth we went, trying on dress after dress.

Ok, let me back up a minute....just before we went shopping our mother had taken us out to the hamburger joint to have lunch. I had just got my retainer. (you know...removable braces) Well, if you've never worn a retainer let me explain...you don't eat with them in...you remove them. So I took my retainer out, wrapped it in a napkin and put it in my pocket.

So there we are in the dress shop and we finish up our shopping and Debby and I get dressed in our "old" clothes. I reach in my pocket to put my retainer back in my mouth and it is in about 8 little pieces. I show it to my mother and she let me have it. How could I be so careless? What did I do? How did I break my retainer?  On and on the inquisition went...all the way home...and for the rest of the day...
It was decided that maybe I would be more careful with my retainer if I had to pay for it out of my allowance.

Flash forward...about 6 years later...Mom, Debby and I are in the car and driving past the old clothing store that was no more...we are reminiscing about the times we shopped there. I remember (quite vividly) the incident with the retainer and my sister starts to giggle. She finally confesses that she had stepped on it in the dressing room and heard it crack. She thought I had candy in my pocket and I was hiding it from her so she stomped it all to hell. My mother, for some reason, found this hilariously funny....me not so much.