Old Friends

Many years ago I applied for and was given a Master Card. Having it was great fun, and I earned miles on American Airlines whenever I charged something. Citibank and I enjoyed a nice relationship, for the most part, though I never let on that I was also using a Visa card issued by Chase, and with this card I earned miles on United Airlines. I saw no reason for either bank to know of my relationship with the other, though I'm sure each could have (and probably did) learn of my financial peccadillos.

Not long ago, however, Citibank sent me a note saying that the interest rate on my card would soon be over 23%, which is about double what Chase makes me pay. Feeling somewhat hurt, I called Citibank and said I wanted to end our relationship. The woman I spoke with seemed somewhat surprised at first when I told her my reason for calling, but after she put me on hold for a couple of minutes, she returned and quite cheerily asked if I would like an email confirming our breakup. Surprise, now, was mine, for I had expected at least a middling attempt at reconciliation. "Is it us?" I wanted her to ask. But, nothing. We were finished, both resigned to remembering our special times together, those tender moments. I wondered if in her time away from the phone she consulted with her boss, who found that I had charged nearly nothing on the card for many, many months, that I had been spending more time and money with Visa. If the woman had voiced a willingness to change to keep us together, I might have relented. On a slightly related note, in some moments on some days recently I have wished my former employer had made a similar effort to keep me around. Maybe I should learn how to bluff better than I know how.

Perhaps not oddly enough, just a day or so on one side or another of our breakup, Tiger Woods and his own peccadillos hit the news. When I first heard how he and his SUV didn't quite make it away from home unscathed, my first thought was that there aren't many reasons for a married man to dash from his house in those hours between midnight and dawn. I really don't care too much about Tiger Woods, for I haven't worshiped a professional athlete since I was a kid and Billy Williams played for the Chicago Cubs. Maybe Woods is, as some have said, the best athlete of the century, but that certainly doesn't mean he's an especially good (or intelligent) person. Then again, I don't know that he never really claimed to be either good or intelligent--those adjectives were ascribed by others who ascribe those types of things. Woods was once one of the faces of American Express, the snootiest of all credit cards, and I wonder how they ended their relationship.

On the heels of Tiger Woods' rush into gossipy tabloids, I read that the wife of Mark Sanford, the governor of North Carolina, had filed for divorce. Good for her! She's certainly milking the governor's affair for all the publicity she can, but I admired her for not standing beside him as he confessed to all that he had denied, all the lies he had told his family and the citizens of North Carolina. I also read that Sanford, who is a conservative republican, would not be impeached. Being a liar and an adulterer doesn't mean much in the political realm (see Clinton, William). In South Carolina, however, democrat Cecil Bothwell, a city councilman in Asheville, is at risk of being impeached because he is an atheist, which his opponents say is a sin. Now, Bothwell may or may not be a good person, and I certainly don't know if he is either a liar or an adulterer. It seems like he's being hounded because of a pre-existing condition, though, since from what I've discovered in my tentative steps into Christianity, everyone is a sinner. Comes with the territory of being human, I think. Threatened for impeachment simply because he doesn't believe in god? Bizarre. What if he were Muslim--would that spare him?

I also do not especially care what the governor of North Carolina does when he's not hiking the Appalachian Trail, and far be it for me to say that maybe he didn't find love when he wasn't hiking there. Maybe Tiger Woods thought he had found love, as well, though from what I've heard and read, I'm doubtful. I once wrote a novel in which the protagonist thought he had found new love, too, but he was a jerk and wanted to keep both his wife and his girlfriend. His girlfriend's husband, come to think of it, was a professional golfer, and only at the end of the story does that protagonist realize how much of a jerk he is.

Me? I think I'll get over my separation with my Master Card. My Visa treats me well, but I did notice today that the card expires in less than a month. I wonder, Will they send me a new card? Or, do they, too, see my very low balance and lack of activity? Maybe they'll be the ones who want a separation.