Hand-Me-Downs

Erica Rhodes
9 min readNov 24, 2021

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough. — Walt Whitman

Photo by Becca McHaffie on Unsplash

When we were young, my sister used to sell me her hand-me-downs.

I may have fallen for it a few times.

She wasn’t unkind about it. Just had good business sense.

Knowing I admired her so, she wasn’t going to easily part with her pink, puffy sweatshirt, or purple Converse.

Once, she even brought me to her best friend Rebecca’s house to “shop.”

I found a very cool pair of faded bell-bottom blue-jeans, which I wore every day. I still remember how soft they were and how they fit my (then) skinny, ballerina legs just right.

After I threw a huge fit about never having decent clothes, my mom finally decided to give me and my sister $100 a month to “learn how to budget” for clothing. Hence — my never learning said budgeting skills. I did learn that temper-tantrums work! (Though not so much in my 30s).

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I drove to my friend Erin’s house in Hollywood today, because I had promised to do a friend’s podcast. I recently moved to a new apartment near the ocean, and although it’s peaceful, the steady drone of traffic is not ideal for recording.

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