Letter to the Bank #24

Dear Banks,

You must be thinking I am not a reliable correspondent given the random nature of my letters. Well all I can say is it takes one to know one. That or our letters simply keep crossing in the mail. You don’t reply to my letters and I don’t reply to yours. It’s a bit like those Pinter plays where two characters appear to be participating in something of a conversation though in truth they are not hearing each other and are simply expressing their inmost thoughts at each other. If they connect at all it is accidental. I guess I keep writing in the hopes something similar will occur with us. I keep hoping we will connect. If I keep writing and you keep sending me statements (and/or credit card offers) the odds are surely in our favor?

Today’s letter is a somewhat hurried one necessitated as it is by the fact of my having embarked on an ambitious project I believe you will find both a creative and worthy one. I am trying to follow your example and make money. I love making things so how hard can it be for me to make money? Just to be clear I am not talking about pretend money. My efforts to exchange artfully reproduced bills and coins have not met with success. I’m talking about collateral. The reason this note is a hurried one is this: I may have put the cart before the horse. Suffice it to say I did not want you showing up at your bank and wondering why there was an old washing machine sitting on your doorstep. The fact is I put it there. No symbolism is intended. This is not a joke about money laundering. I put it there as collateral. I figured in this way I could take the pressure off my poor old house. The burden it carries as my only asset of any worth is too much so I am spreading the weight across all my things. The stacks of boxes contain books, wonderful books for the most part and also books I have not felt inclined to look at in a while. Indeed if I never saw them again it wouldn’t break my heart—same with the two sofas, the hat-rack, the used coffee maker and the weed whacker. Please feel free to put them in your basement and indeed you should sell them, or auction them off, if I should ever fail to honor my commitments to you. Besides I do not need any of it right now. It all just takes up valuable space. But think about it. How much easier it must be for you to have my collateral right there where you can keep an eye on it.
Anyway I’m rather pleased with myself for coming up with this idea. Let me know what you think. Do that in place of sending me yet another statement that shows just how feeble my current finances are. I’m thinking this idea could really catch on. Just as in the healthcare system, where the preemptive actions of eating well and exercising are truly appreciated, the banking sector can surely see the benefit of people piling the possessions they are likely to lose any way, in the near future, on the doorsteps of the banks, who otherwise would be required to send in the repo-men and/or collection agencies to do so at huge cost to...the banks! You will also have much happier clients. If they were able to choose what went first and so not suffer the indignity of having their favorite comfy chair pulled out from beneath them so making them appear foolish in public they wouldn’t have every reason to resent the institutions you represent. If you think about it the future already looks rosier doesn’t it? With little imagination you can picture all those people who used to be a bit too heavy but now, thanks to preemptive healthcare initiatives, are eating well, and, thanks to my preemptive collateral initiative are losing weight thanks to the work out they are getting from loading up the backs of their old clunkers with all their junk and then unloading it all in front of the bank—tidily I would hope!

Oh, and one more thing: If any of their clients should default on their loans the banks could have weekend yard sales. I tell you nothing brings together a community quite like a good, old-fashioned yard sale.

Yours sincerely,

KC