She hummed a
merry nonsensical tune as she dropped the paper shredder straight onto the living
room floor, followed soon after by a several-foot-high pile of receipts, bank
statements, credit card statements, and tax records that stretched out across
both the years and the hardwood. Without
breaking stride, she plugged in the shredder, switched it on, sat on a chair,
and grabbed a bunch of stray pieces that had been around the top of the former
pile.
“<La-la-la-la-la-la-la->
What the blazes is this?!”
She stared
closer at a credit card statement dated March 3, 2014.
“Why would I pay
over $3,000.00 to this rando?! Was I scammed? I was totally scammed! More than five years ago! And I’m just realizing it now!!!”
She grabbed her
phone and selected her sister’s number.
“Hey, what’s
up?”
“Only everything
horrible – do you know why I would have dropped three grand on somebody named –
” she squinted at the page – “XZKR JQSW back in 2014?! Did somebody rip me off and I completely forgot?! How am I going to recover that money now?!”
“Three grand in
2014, hm…. Oh, I think those initials are the cruise line from that trip we
took with the parentals that year; this probably was one of the payments for
it.”
She shook her
head and laughed. “No, that wasn’t 2014,
that would make it half a decade ago, and we only just went on that trip… um…
two years… no, three… no….”
“Yeah, it was
five.”
“…Already?”
“Uh-huh. And if that amount was such a red flag, you
would’ve taken care of it back then.
What brought this up, anyway – you finally shredding all those papers
you’ve been hoarding over the millennia?”
“I am spring
cleaning.”
“Well, have fun,
and try not re-read all your past bills.
Bye!”
“Ta-ta.”
She definitively
shred that statement and moved on to the next.
“Aw, this was my
first bill for college textbooks. Wow,
were they overinflated.”
“Let’s see, what
could UZAG EGLM have been, and why would I have given them several hundred of
my hard-earned dollars?... Oh right, that was the first and last time I went
skydiving... 13 years ago?! That
can’t be right.” She checked the other
items listed in the statement. “OK, I
guess it’s right.”
“Why on Earth
did I spend the same amount of money every month at that video rental store for
10 years straight?... Oh yeah, I joined their club so I could get discounts and
borrow movies for nine whole days.
[Sniffs] I miss that business
model.”
“Oh man, I can’t
believe I spent that much on skorts! And
I only wore them once!”
“Ooh, that was
the year we went to --------- National Park on vacation. That was a blast, feels like it just
happened… 25 years ago.”
“Boy, those
veterinary bills sure were high. And we
only got eight extra years out of the cat after all that.”
“How come my
court bills are on these things seven times?!”
The shredder
shuddered to a stop, flashing its overheating light as she was forcing receipts
into its gullet.
“Great, this
shredder cost a fortune and it suddenly decides to die after waiting – ”
glances at a half-shredded receipt – “two years after I bought it!”
