debt

You and I hate to owe anybody. It gives somebody the right to be nasty to us. Favors are the purchase of our tolerance.

Isn’t it funny that the people we owe are called “creditors?” Maybe you don’t think it’s funny until you overthink it, like this: as often as “credit” refers to finance, it also refers to trust or belief.

To figure this out, I could consult a dictionary, but so could you. Instead, let’s play.

To give someone credit could mean that you’re allowing him to take stuff from you without paying for it just now. It could also mean that you are recounting his act, one accomplished or yet to be. In both these instances, you are treating this someone with a lot of honor. You don’t give credit of any kind to a bum.

A creditor is someone who treats us real nice, giving us a privilege reserved for someone honorable. Sometimes they are doing it because they are hoping or expecting us to prove otherwise—companies are built on interloping bums. Other creditors are doing us a favor, helping us rise to confirm their faith in us. Other creditors love us.

The benign ones at the middle level are the ones I don’t mind. Credit at the company store, or from a casual acquaintance, I can take as easily as leave, because it costs them little when I disappoint them.

But I despise the sharks, and I loathe the lovers. Both types threaten to eat me alive.

Can you survive without credit? Probably. I’m not sure, though, if you can live without it. The problem with spending your life taking no favors, is that you die with no glee, having got away with nothing and having received no gifts. Life that has only what it earned has no amazement, does it? I haven’t lived that long…maybe I’m wrong about that.

I’m twenty-five now. I owe a bank in Wisconsin a hundred thousand dollars today. My mother thinks I’m a failure. But there are a few friends and a few people who don’t know me very well who think I’m amazing and have a wonderful life ahead of me. I think I had better keep well away from them. I’d hate to have them invest too much, and feel the pinch when they lose it.