Train them up in the way they should go...

or bid. Jacob went to the Studio Bee auction with me last night. He was the only one who even wanted to go. Ryan declared that he didn't want to sit around and watch people buy stuff. Carly and Wes echoed his sentiments, so they stayed home. They have been to many auctions with Pappaw, so there was no budging them.

Which left Jacob to tag along with me. No surprise there. He loves to keep me company. We registered for the auction, ate our dinner and settled in to wait for the excitement to begin. We went through the auction book, and I marked the things we would bid on and how much I was willing to pay for each item.

Then I handed the auction number to him so that he could do our bidding. This is where I should have had a training session beforehand. The first item we (he) bid on came up and I had marked $100.00 as our top price.

The auctioneer started the bid out at $20.00, and before anyone could say a thing, Jacob holds up his number and yells "One Hundred Dollars!"

Loud and clear. No mistaking it for Twenty. Needless to say, the room was silent - except for laughter - and we won the item.

Then -- we had a quick training session on starting low and from that moment on, he was a rock. The auctioneer would try to get him to bid up even by a buck, but he would just shake his head no, like "Move on, buddy." It reminded me of Pappaw. He would have approved.