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How a Frugal Find Helped End a Friendship

Square-plates

LOL! That decorative arrangement with the black and green square plates shown in my last post reminds me of the episode that probably marked the beginning of the end of a very close friendship.

The woman who dubbed me “Funny about Money” (not knowing I could overhear her speaking into La Maya’s telephone answering machine) had wildly expensive tastes. One day she and I were cruising a wildly upscale shopping center when we came across a tony interior decor store that was going out of business. We each grabbed a bunch of stuff that, at “discounted” prices, still cost a great deal more than it was worth. She was taken by those stone fruits and bought three of them at near full price. I spotted a few that were chipped or unnoticeably cracked and talked the salesman into giving them to me for next to nothing—in fact, one of them, he gave to me for free.

My friend then found two square plates, one black and one green. They bore some “artist’s” signature on the back. Arranging the fake fruit atop the plates created a nice effect, and so she bought the damn things for an astonishing price. As I recall, she paid over 100 bucks apiece. These she took home and arranged atop her dining-room buffet, to handsome effect.

Well, I wanted something to put my fake fruits on, too.

I studied those plates and thought…hmh. They looked mighty familiar.

A day later I betook myself to Cost Plus/World Market, where what should I find—on sale!—but those two square plates you see up there. I got them for under five bucks apiece.

Reader, those two plates are identical to the unholy expensive square plates my friend bought at the upscale design store. The only difference is that mine are not signed on the bottom by someone nobody ever heard of.

Heeee! Was she peeved!

I never told her what I paid for them, but she did know I got them at the low-brow Cost Plus, home of the world’s largest collection of $8 table wines. Our relationship cooled into the frosty zone after that, and within a couple of months she cut me off without explanation. I assume it was because of the $5 plates, which in her mind would have hugely devalued the “art” she imagined she was buying. That, and having embarrassed herself with the “funny about money” remark.

😆