60,000 Pennies

My sister Carla is pretty much a badass. I grew up always looking up to her. I actually wanted to BE her for the entirety of my youth. I consistently went into her room and stole her stuff just to try and magically morph into The Mystical Big Sister. Needless to say, this pissed her off to no end. She exacted her revenge once by cutting off all of my hair when I was about 5 years old and we didn't always have the closest relationship (I don't blame her, since I constantly raided her room), but once we hit adulthood we became the type of sisters who would cut off a limb for each other. Carla and I, though we don't have the time to see or talk to each other as often as we'd both like, have each other's backs no matter what.

So when Carla was going through a horrific divorce several years ago, I felt like I was going through it with her. In retrospect, I had no idea what she was enduring, because you can never understand this kind of punishing soul-extraction until you yourself experience it. And she had a young child as well, which I'm pretty sure makes the whole process indeterminately more unbearable. In any case, I was as sympathetic and empathetic as I could possibly be, and I hated the whole process for her.

My sister, the pragmatist of the two of us, has always had this quite practical theory. While she was going through divorce mediation, she said to me, "Almost Free, it's always the person who wants out of the marriage more who ends up paying more."

For Carla, this ended up being very true. Even though Carla's ex, Jack, has a job, she ended up taking the brunt of the financial hit because she made a few more bucks than he. Jack is such a tool you wouldn't even believe it. He put her through so much torment that it would take me a year to even begin to address it, but let's just say that he was the epitome of a horse's ass during that marriage (that dumbass actually asked me to sleep with him while he was still married to my sister). But yet Carla never once bad-mouthed him, comported herself with utter class, and ended up coughing up the bucks in order to end the unholy union. She's not rich by any means, but she just happens to have a good work ethic, so she got screwed.

Carla and Jack ended up sharing joint custody of my nephew, but according to the laws in her state, she had to pay him child support. OK, let's think about this.... joint custody, both have jobs, and SHE has to pay HIM child support?! On top of that, she had to buy their house from him. On top of that, he wanted to have half of her inheritance from our parents, and she had to fight him on that. To say that he has a sense of entitlement that rivals Paris Hilton's is a gross understatement.

Here's where her theory kicked in. I protested, telling her that this was the most appalling agreement I'd ever heard. She said, "Almost Free, I don't care. It's a bitter check that I have to write each month, but I simply consider it the price of freedom."

Now Carla has 6 years before she writes that final check, and we have a plan. On that beautiful day that she's required to deliver that final payment, we're going to have a little get-together in her state. I'm bringing my girls, she's gathering hers, and we're renting an ostentatious limo. It's going to be a scene. I'm bringing my newscaster cousin to film the debacle, we're going to get dressed in our finest designer gowns, pop bottles of Krug Rosè to drink on the way to Jack's house.....

and drop her final payment of $600.00 on Jack's front lawn. In pennies. 60,000 pennies, to be exact.