Crime and Punishment

A sorted through her purse today and found a forgotten gift card.

"Sweet!" you might say.

Or "Big deal."

But here's the thing: 'We,' have history of saving gift-cards. Not really hoarding; hoarding is too strong a word for this. And hoarding gift-cards doesn't have the same dramatic effect on TV as say, hoarding garbage does. If she were to buy loads of crap with gift cards based on late night infomercials and then never throw any of it away, and the Fire Marshall couldn't find any of my dozen or so bikes from underneath her hoarding ways, then yeah, that would be a problem that could make for good TV. But this, this is not hoarding.

Yet there is a strong historical trend of hanging onto gift-cards or gift certificates well past their expiratition date while all along being too gun-shy to pull the trigger because next time/month/year there might be a better deal/sale/need where that twenty-bucks might make the difference of us eating or not. Then the odd day comes to clean out the purse and low and behold; a stack of free movie passes, coffee, dinner or $$ off at select stores, all as valuable as East German currency.

Anyway, she found a gift card today from like 3 years ago and decided to test it to see if it worked. She logged onto her favorite on-line retailer and bought earrings.

"Good for you," I said.

I would have done the same thing. Except I don't carry a purse or let any amount of money in any form last for more than about 12 hours in my possesion. Except for the one time I carried a single $1.00 bill for a month. It was when I stumbled across another $1.00 bill on the sidewalk that I remembered I had the first one and immediately bought a cup of coffee.

At anyrate, A buys the earrings and the total, including shipping is more than the value of the card. Except that, and here's where the story really gets good, the charge goes through. The card worked at 101.4% of it's original value 3 years ago. Gift cards as I am aware are not an investment. Worse case, they lose a percentage value over time until they are worth nothing (at which point she tries to use them). Best case, they are worth what say they are worth.

So now, she's really amped. She also feels a wave of guilt. As if she just kicked The Man in the crotch. She becomes distraught. Then excited again. Then a fire truck drives by 6 blocks away and she thinks its the cops coming to arrest her. Then I walk in and she spills her guts of the whole thing. Knowing that telling the truth should set her free she remains torn, frought with emotion after her confession and is now additionally processing her anger at me for laughing at her.

"The true cost of these earrings," she says, pointing her finger of justice at me,"No, the punishment... no, both the cost and the punishment, is my conscience. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to wear them!"