Collection
A small story:
Seventeen years ago, I designed and patented a baby carrier with a friend. We called it The HipHugger. We wanted it to just be HipHugger, no article, but HipHugger.com was owned by a strip club in a distant city. I have been to a strip club or two and do not recall seeing these young women clustering around the hips of their clients but the strip club wouldn’t relinquish its URL to us and that is how businesses got named in those modern times.
Considering that we went to market three days before 9/11, we didn’t do badly in the marketplace. About twelve years ago, for a number of reasons, we decided to close the business. Two days ago, I got a letter from the bank where our checking account had been. The Hiphugger account had owed this bank money for a great deal of time. They were out of patience with us. They were about to send this to a collection agency. I had one final chance to get right with them.
We scofflaws owed .60.
This is not a typo.
My business partner and I had recklessly left not quite 2/3rds of a dollar in the debit column of this long-shuttered revolving line of credit. Frankly, I’m surprised this information wasn’t relayed by solemn Feds standing on my doorstep. The sheer smallness meant this was probably going to be a stupid and frustrating conversation.
“Blah Bank, this is Mumble, ID number NUMBERSSAIDVERYQUICKLY, how may I help you?”
I pointed at the financial albatross around my neck and told my sad story. She quickly determined that being as it was over ten years ago, the account no longer existed in the system.
I parried with noting it existed enough to owe them money.
She rummaged through the Coptic urns of dead accounts, finally retrieving us. She and I cheered her perseverance.
The professional and seamless keyboard tapping suddenly stopped.
“You owe…sixty cents?"
“Yes!” I said brightly. Numbers are not my gift, so I get overly excited when I have anything resembling the right answer.
“I’m not sure the system is going to allow that,” she said doubtfully.
“This would be the same system that sent me the letter saying if I didn’t pay them, this was going to a collection agency?” I said.
"You should know that the bank has a policy I have to follow, no matter how small the amount is," she said.
We all waited expectantly.
“This will have to be made in two payments."
I had feared stupid and frustrating. This was becoming stupid and carbonated. It was like my birthday. “So,” I said, trying to keep from giggling, “I am going to have to make two payments…of thirty cents?”
“If it accepts it at all.”
“And if I can’t pay, this will go to a collection agency, which…”
“Won’t have a system in place for accepting an amount this small.”
I was living in Stupidstan’s capital city, Bureaucracyvania. Under the office table, I kicked my legs in joy.
She typed, and sighed, “Yeah, it won’t take any amount under a dollar.”
She thought, and said, “Would you be willing to pay a dollar, which is the absolute minimum the system will accept?”
Usually, the thought of giving a bank a single cent more than they wrung from my marrow would have filled me with rage, but I just saw that damn Marie Kondo series and now everything has to be dealt with. I gave her permission to overcharge me forty cents.
The computer would not allow it. Banks are cesspools of the Haves bleeding the Have-Nots, but this computer refused to accept any money it wasn’t authorized to take. My friend on the other end of the line went to talk to her supervisor.
Her supervisor suggested overcharging me up to a dollar. My new friend and I chuckled at her supervisor’s suggestion. We were seasoned veterans in the hundredth-of-a-dollar transaction world. The book where I am the unlikely protagonist would be called THE VERY SMALL SHORT.
After several minutes of wrestling with this tiny pile of nothing, the supervisor cut into our call. She had discussed this with her supervisor who had, in turn, discussed it with a bust of Alexander Hamilton and it was determined that the balance was to be written off.
All members of the banking establishment were fascinated it had lived as long as it had. I had a moment of baseless pride. If we are the sum of the things we create, of course my banking would be small, weird, inexplicable and capable of briefly making a mockery of a monolith.
