January 2, 2008

Credit Card Fraud
Can Be A Good Thing

Great news.  We had a credit card cancelled. It couldn’t have come at a better time. 

Jan used one of her cards at a gas pump the behind the counter dude said the card had been declined. The turndown was not a major drill, Jan switched to another card and returned home to make a “Hey what’s up?” call to the credit card company.  Seems somebody tried to purchase something on-line (details not exactly my long suit) using her number.  The card sleuths said they had detected fraud and cancelled the card.  They’ll be sending replacement post haste and urged us to cut up the old card.  Excuse me! 

It’s winter and ice on the windshield season.  The perfect time for a de-commissioned credit card to fulfill its intended purpose, as an ice scraper. Oh sure, the well organized among us have actual ice scrapers in their car, but well organized is not a part of my DNA.  

A fair amount of my winter is spent in ski country.  Here in this season of bountiful snow at day’s end one regularly returns to a car windshield coated in ice.  You know the drill, the morning drive warms the glass and while you’re skiing the day’s snowfall lands, melts and freezes on the windshield.  So before heading home, there’s the matter of ice removal that needs to be addressed.  What’s a “why didn’t I remember to put the scraper in the car?” person to do? 

Past experience dictates several unsuccessful options.    There’s the fingernail scrape.  Not only is this method non-productive, it also causes painful frozen fingers and broken nails. It also contributes to one’s vocabulary becoming limited to one-syllable words beginning with g, d and f. The oh so frustrating fingernail method causes the scraper to give up after establishing the smallest of slits on the windshield leading one to head out into traffic like a tank driver going into battle.   

It’s possible scraping ice off the windshield is the one reason the penny remains viable in the American monetary system.  The Lincoln headed copper coin buys nothing, but it can scrape ice.  Other coins don’t offer the same scraping efficiencies as a penny.  Dimes are minute and have a tendency to slip from the fingers and fall into the windshield wiper motors recess to be lost forever while nickels, quarters and their ilk are much to thick to scrape ice correctly.  

There’s also the run the car engine until defrosters work their magic method.  And while two and a half bucks a gallon gas seems a high price to pay for a motorized ice melter, it’s not nearly as big a negative to the Type A personality as being forced to sit unmoving for fifteen minutes in the ski area parking lot while the rest of the world, (those with ice scrapers) flaunt their clear glass windshields as they head for home.