In the only time in this life that I will ever be married, there was a period of several months when my ex and I were living in different cities a couple hours apart. We would take turns making the drive on the weekends. She had no credit cards because her credit history was such a s~~~ show that no bank would give her one. When I learned that she was making that trip with less than 20$ on her, in a car I didn’t consider all that reliable, I gave her an old credit card that I never used so that if that car broke down, or there was some other emergency, she would at least not be stranded and helpless. These were the days before cell phones. The card had a relatively low limit but it was enough to get out of some minor jam somewhere.
We had a long discussion about what exactly constituted an emergency that would be a legitimate reason to use the card. I got eye contact and made her repeat back to me what I’d said to her so that there was no way we were not understanding each other. I was reassured that she wasn’t traveling across the state with less than 20$, and figured that would be the end of it until I had time to teach her how to manage and rebuild her credit report so she could get her own card.
The following month, I got a bill from that credit card’s bank. I was surprised because there hadn’t been any emergencies. It was for $185 for calls to the 1-900 number at the “Mistress Cleo Psychic Hotline Network”. It wasn’t that the money was all that much. $185 would not break the budget. It was the f~~~ing principle that I had tried to look out for her and she had done this… basically serving up my credit card number to criminals. I went ape s~~~ screaming in her face.
This was out of character for me and surprised her so much that when I demanded to know what the f~~~ she had even expected to learn by calling, she was too shaken to come up with a story, and spilled the truth: She thought I might be having an affair and cheating on her, and wanted the psychic hotline to tell her. At hearing this, I was so p~~~ed off that I screamed at her about what they had actually told her for an answer to her question. She said that she hadn’t actually spoken to anyone, because after calling and following the recorded instructions and entering my credit card number, no one ever picked up. SO SHE CALLED BACK 2 MORE TIMES… No one picked up those calls either, but she still keyed in my credit card number two more times. (This by a woman with a college degree).
I stopped screaming at that point. I stopped speaking. I couldn’t talk anymore. I was so p~~~ed off my hands were shaking. But they weren’t shaking so bad that I couldn’t take the card from her purse and cut it to small pieces in front of her. She was too scared to speak. When I could speak again, I called and cancelled the card.
Consolation came twice. The first was the following year when I read that the operators of the psychic hotline had been taken down on federal wire fraud charges. I smiled a little when I read it. While we were married, I was able to get her credit repaired enough that some poor idiot at a bank somewhere was convinced to issue her a card. A couple years later, a few months after the divorce was final, I got a call from a credit card collector about some unpaid credit card debt she had racked up, but never paid. I started openly laughing as soon as I realized what the call was about. I explained to the collector that any money loaned to her on any terms should be considered a gift, because that’s how she was going to consider it, and that he should make a note on her credit report clearly explaining this for the next lender who checked.
Look, it's not my fault that tornado dropped a house on your sister. Now get back on your broom and get your ass out of here... and take your monkeys with you
BrainPilot 2 years, 7 months ago.
