My darling, dear, and creative friend Melina often writes words that I feel like could have come spilling directly out of my brain, into her fingertips, and onto the computer screen. In her post, Perpetrator, she discusses the phenomenon when, as a writer (and, I'm sheepish to call myself such a thing, but Charlie assures me that I am.. so let's roll with it today), "life throws up on you and your first thought is 'This will make really good material!'"

I'm very familiar with the feeling. But I'm sad to say this is not such a story. Hopefully someone else enjoys reading it, because I won't. Or at least shares in my ire.

Upon returning to the states and landing in the disgusting hellhole that is the Miami airport, I was excited to turn my phone on (for the first time in almost two weeks)... only to discover 27 billion phone messages from a debt collector. Thinking this was strange, I ignored said debt collector through the weekend, and when the phone calls didn't stop, finally called back yesterday, and said, "Um, hi, yeah, you guys keep calling me?"

To which I discovered I apparently owed $1,000 to Bank of America. Again, I found this strange, as I haven't used my Bank of America card in a year. Despite Bank of America's claim that they are "everywhere".. they are not in Woodstock, Vermont, nor are they in Madison, WI... or anywhere in a 3 hour vicinity of Madision, WI, making banking with them virtually impossible. I stopped banking with them last April, keeping a small chunk of change in the account in case I ever moved to a location where I chose to bank with Bank of America again.

I feel kind of bad for the poor, southern sap who had the misfortune of telling me that "I had overdrawn" last June, my account had been closed last October, and now, I had accrued $1,000 in fees. After all, he wasn't personally responsible. None the less, I had some choice words for him, as I explained that the first I heard of this alleged overdrawing was that afternoon, from a debt collecter. He informed me that the $585 check I'd written in June was the perpetrator, to which I retorted, "Sir, for the last time, I haven't used this account since March. So how could I have written a $585 check in June?!" He took this as an appropriate "out" and transferred me from one sector to another, when I finally landed in Frauds.

Eventually, I realized what happened. Last April, I wrote my ex-landlord a check for $585, although I had already moved to Wisconsin, on the off chance that I didn't find a subletter for the apartment. I did find a subletter, and my landlord assured me that he had ripped the check up. Two months later, the subletter peaced out and decided not to pay rent. I felt bad for my ex-landlord, but I had purposely taken myself off the lease and had this guy added to avoid just this kind of situation. Now, the funds had been essentially depleted from my Bank of America account and put into a WI Credit Union, and apparently my tricky landlord had held onto the check... and he went ahead and cashed it. The details on why the bank never contacted me are still shaky ("Ma'am, we did contact you" "Sir, no you didn't." "Well ma'am, that's what we do. We contact people about these things." "Well sir, please explain to me why the FIRST TIME I HEARD ABOUT THIS WAS TODAY, FROM A DEBT COLLECTOR!?!" "Ma'am, we did contact you.") but, since I "waited so long" to make a claim on the check, their "hands are tied" and there's nothing they can do. Except, of course, charge me one thousand dollars.