$4028.10

Updated: Rita B, wow, that's one good memory you've got there! Yep, someone bought a bunch of Star Wars figurines (for goodness sake, not even anything remotely cool) online once, apparently managing to hack into my PayPal account and try and pay for them that way. Because "I" spent over $1000.00 within a 24-hr period, and "I" was a new customer, the collectible company itself suspected fraud and canceled the order. But that was almost four years ago --- I'm impressed you remembered that. I had almost forgotten it myself. You make a good point about only using cash from here on out. Better yet, I'll be the sole US citizen trying to barter goods and services with chickens from my farm or bushels of vegetables from my garden. Except I don't have a garden. Or chickens. Man, I'm screwed.

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I stole something once. Does that make me a bad person? A thief forever? Once a crook, always a crook? I still feel ashamed about it. I was working one of my high school jobs, at a store that was just like Super Wal Mart before there was such a thing as Super Wal-Marts. That’s how I used to describe the store to people who had never heard of it: “It’s just like Wal-Mart, but with groceries, too.” Funny how at the time, some people considered that an odd concept, and were bothered by the thought of being able to buy underwear and motor oil and potting soil at the same place they bought their groceries, and yet now, it’s commonplace.

Anyway, I was a checker, back in the olden days before scanners, when we had to actually punch the prices in on cash registers, and people paid for things by writing checks, and I would copy their employment information on the back of the check, and then dinosaurs carried the sacks of groceries to people’s wagons and buggies so they could go home with the ingredients necessary to churn their own butter and make their own clothes from gunny sacks. Sometimes when it was cold in the store, we’d grab sweaters or jackets from Ladies Wear and put them on while we were working, tucking the tags up in our sleeves. One Sunday, my co-workers (equally as grown up and mature as me, for sure) dared me to see if I could walk out of the store with the jacket still on, without anyone noticing. I didn’t need a new jacket --- I didn’t even particularly like the jacket I had on, sort of a gray-ish New-Member-ish thing with a stand up collar and a really unflattering fit. But I did it on a dare, then just got lazy and didn’t take it back, and then before I realized it, enough time had elapsed that by default, I had to admit that I had stolen it. As in, taken something without paying for it.** Technically, I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of “stealing”, to take something that belongs to someone else, or to help yourself to something you didn’t earn or weren’t invited to take.

So, to the cockroach who STOLE $4028.10 from me last month, you suck. Maybe you didn’t come in my house, literally, and take items that belong to me. Maybe you didn’t pawn my radio and cd player out of my car. Maybe you didn’t pilfer my savings account with forged checks, or steal my ATM card out of my purse and help yourself to the money in my checking account. But by getting ahold of my credit card, and going on a three-day shopping spree, to purchase things you didn’t earn, you were stealing. It's the same as the girl I used to work with in my 20's, who knew she was about to file bankruptcy, so she went out and charged up all her credit cards. How can you people DO this, and sleep with a clear conscience at night?

I’m still not quite sure how you did it, since the card never left my possession, and all your charges were clear across the country, during a three-day period. I have to assume it had something to do with the new credit cards that didn’t arrive when my credit card company said they would. So they canceled the account and sent new cards to my home. Somehow in the midst of all that, someone did quite a bit of retail therapy at my expense. Was it an inside job at Visa? A mailbox thief? A waiter who “lifted” my numbers from a lunch or dinner here and sold them? Who knows how? More importantly, who knows WHY?

I’m wondering if you justify it by telling yourself that credit card theft doesn’t hurt anyone. I mean, the items didn’t actually belong to anyone but a bunch of fat-cat retail store owners, so it’s not like you took things I actually owned --- for real --- in my own possession. You didn't have to look me in the eye and push me down on the street and take my purse, so to you, this might be a facless crime. But it IS a crime, and you *did* hurt me. You hurt all of us. Who do you think has to raise retail prices to cover the expense of theft? Don’t you imagine credit card companies have to raise interest rates, or lower cash back offers, to make up the difference? To pay the people they have working for them in their Fraud Investigation Departments? Ultimately, we all pay. The retailers, the wholesalers, the companies, and the consumers. And why? Because you’re so fucking arrogant you think you can just take whatever you want without earning it. Because I guess the bourgeois concept of working for what you want is beneath you. Saving your money, until you’ve got enough for the big purchases, I suppose that doesn’t apply to you. Only us "little people", those of us with ethics and morals who were taught to pay our own way and earn the things we want. You? Not so much. So you steal people’s credit cards, buy yourself what you want, and think you’re getting away with it. Who knows? Probably you will. And in the meantime, I’ve got to jump through the hoops of getting this cleared up with my credit card company. I’ve got to go a week with no convenient way of buying things for myself, while our current cards are destroyed and we’re waiting for new ones. I’ve got to contact all my creditors that I auto-pay every month on that card and switch over to the new card, when it arrives. Because you are a cockroach. A lazy, greedy, covetous, assuming cockroach.

So here’s what I think about you, and hope for you, and wish for you:

I hope your baby is doing well and feeling better, because I’m just certain that the $654.35 you spent at various grocery stores those three days was for diapers and formula and prescriptions for the poor little thing and his/her ear infections or diaper rash or whatever else might have been wrong. I could *almost* understand that, if you didn’t have money to feed your starving baby, or buy medicine, I could *almost* feel sorry for you. But damn, that would have been a lot of diapers, too, and no baby can go through six hundred dollars worth of diapers in three days, so I have to assume you were buying other crap as well. Probably equally important things like meat and beer and cigarettes and wine.

I hope you enjoy whatever electronic device it is you bought at Radio Shack for $87.11 although secretly, I hope it’s defective and the tiny electrical impulses leaking out of it give you a migraine.

I’m a little disappointed that you went out to eat three times and the most you spent at any restaurant was $50.82. You’d think if someone was treating themselves on someone else’s credit card, the least they could do would be to invite some friends along, maybe a dozen or so, and offer to treat for them, as well. So not only are you a thieving bastard, you’re a cheap thieving bastard.

I hope the $1,146.72 worth of clothing you bought at J. Crew and Banana Republic are bright orange, so you can continue to wear them after you go to prison for credit card theft, which is where you belong as far as I’m concerned.

I hope the $470.45 purse you bought from Coach comes in black and white stripes so it will possibly match your jail uniform.

I hope the $70 haircut you got from Hair Masters makes you look pretty for your prison photo. Or yikes, makes you look pretty for your “friendlier, bigger” inmates, if you know what I’m saying, and I think you do.

Most of all, even if the Fraud Investigation Department of my credit card company doesn’t ever find you, I hope you enjoy that $1500.00 big screen Sony TV you bought. I’m a little worried, though, that when you take it with you, when you ROT IN HELL, that the plastic encasement will bubble up and melt all over when you get there. Because did you know it’s really warm there? Too warm for TV, that’s for sure. But *just* the right temperature for immoral thieves.

{{No, I’m not annoyed, resentful, or vindictive, why do you ask?}}

And while I'd like to think I'm raising my own children to be better than this, something tells me I might be failing.


**For the record, I have no recollection of what ever happened to the jacket I stole as a teenager. But I have a very clear memory of going in to work for several weeks, showing up early and working without clocking in, and clocking out at my normal time but sticking around and working late, in an attempt to appease my conscience and “pay back” for the ugly jacket that I’m pretty sure I never wore again. It was wrong to take the jacket in the first place, especially on a stupid dare, but I know if I was to bump into my old boss, or the store owner, on the street today, I could hold my head up and look them in the eye, knowing I at least *tried* to make retribution.

Something tells me I won’t get the same from this cockroach thief.