credit debt? lookee here!
September 30, 2002, 6:48 pm

"I'm going to go convert change to actual cash at Food Lion. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta." --email from Dave

I once saved all my change that I had amassed over a year's time and ended up with close to $150. Of course, in that time I was superfluously anal about collecting change. Every penny I ganked from between the couch cushions or that I rescued from the rim of the washing machine went into the bucket.

I could use the same philosophy right about now.

"But Jess," you may say to me, "don't you live at home? You have no real financial responsibilites, right?"

Ah, dear reader, you see, up until now I would disagree with you and give some bullshit response about "paying up a credit debt" that I had gleaned from four years of bar tabs that I have yet to pay.

All that ends on Wednesday.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I will have paid off my entire VISA bill as of October 2, 2002. This is a momentous occasion for me. I'm going to buy a dress to celebrate. I no longer owe "the man" money on a card that I stopped using in August 2000.

For those of you who have yet to cut your teeth on plastic, a few words of advice that I never got that you may find helpful:

1. A credit card is not a card that magically buys you things. Do not use it for things you can't afford ($35 DVDs, entire house bar tabs, $400 new wardrobes, lava lamps, dorm room furniture, etc.).

2. Because you'll undoubtedly ignore #1: pay your fucking bill. Do NOT not pay it. That sucks. That's when the creditors start calling and getting annoyed with you.

3. Don't ever get a "cash advance" on a credit card. You don't need that cash. Get a job, you hippie.

4. PAY YOUR BILL.

That's my credit advice. It's the best I can do. I learned the hard way and have to pay 10.9% financing on my new car (yes, it's THAT bad). Don't screw up your credit, dahlins.

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My students are being awfully cute about the Homecoming dance. They're all pairing off like opposite batteries; now they're trying to convince one of my coworkers to ask me to the dance. I want to tell them that theoretically, I may already have a date (although I think I'm dumped, but I'm not sure). I want to tell them how smitten I am with this coworker, but I don't want to fuel their fire. I want to tell him that, like them, I get nervous and twitchy when he's around. I get fluttery when he smirks at me. I think he's fabulous and wonderful and smart and sweet. I think I overanalyze all his moves towards me; he's just being polite, I have to constantly remind myself, but then he's in my car after school listening to my mix cd with me, and he teases me, and he's freshly sharpened pencils and brand new notebooks and awkward pimples in obscure places on my face that all of my former school crushes have brought me.

I want to tell me that I never expected to be fourteen again when I was twenty-four, but it's happening, and I'm just as bad as the rest of them.