IMPARK00110087U $12.00

Today is not the first occasion our credit card has been charged surreptitiously. Whether the relatively small debit of $12 is a mere accident or by design is not especially pertinent to what I understand from having previously endured larger violations is not an entirely uncommon event.  When I spoke with the bank representative late this afternoon she thanked me for having notified the bank of the indiscretion and informed me that often the culprit who abuses the card initially tests a small amount to see whether the card number works. In any event my card has been cancelled and I must get a replacement.

This petty low-level criminality is indisputably annoying but not altogether intolerable in the broader view of the world.  The central relief is that the bank has - historically at least - absorbed the loss. No doubt the consideration for doing so is the overriding commercial imperative without which customers would seek different mechanism for similar transactions. I once asked the bank whether they would let me know who their investigation revealed was the crook. I never heard from the bank.  The intelligence was secreted within the annals of enterprise similar likely to the details surrounding the legislative conduct of our elected officials. To a degree it is perhaps best overall to distance oneself from certain realities.

The other feature arising from this trifling affair is the mandate to suffer the bumps in the road and move on.  Admittedly I am ill inclined to do so without first having sought a way to resolve an issue. Without becoming thoroughly tarsome I will simply observe that in some instances the modification is transitional; in others, one faces the results and does one's best to accommodate. I would prefer to adopt a dedicated conviction to that thesis but I know it is not my current disposition to do so without a struggle. I have reluctantly concluded that I have a psychosis in that particular regard. Not a pleasant confession but nonetheless uplifting in the sense that it dilutes what is otherwise incomprehensible or plainly frustrating at the very least.

As for the nefarious conduct of others I partly excuse the character as an expression of simple necessity. This doesn't make the matter easily digestible but it may coincide with the other inevitabilities of life.