Thrown Away
By
My editor gave me a dollar bill and told me to write a story. First I thought I would interview a homeless person or catch the bus somewhere, but those stories seemed passé. Somebody has written about homelessness or mass transit. If not, somebody will come along and write them better than me.
When I felt conventional I considered wandering a grocery store and asking people what they would buy with a dollar. Maybe they would say a couple of bananas, maybe a can of Spam. Maybe they would just stare at me, as I would stare at someone who asked that question of me. What can you buy for a dollar? My father would have told me to buy a newspaper, but the New York Times costs a buck-and-a-quarter now and the Minneapolis Star Tribune does not print news, so I don’t really know.
When I felt pernicious I considered spending my dollar at a strip club – somewhere seedy like the Skyway at 7th Street and Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. I heard a man was shot in the alley behind the Skyway once, but I have never seen an alley near there. I heard a one-armed stripper danced there awhile back; a bartender friend once confirmed it for me. Maybe I could interview a stripper. Maybe her name would be Candi or Peaches. Maybe she would be paying for college or raising a child – you always see their stretch marks. But I did not go, so I don’t really know.
Since I had already injected myself into this story, I pondered what I could write involving my editor’s dollar and myself. Since I am student, a friend suggested I write about the increasing cost of college, perhaps about how colleges dispense financial aid and how it affected me. I interviewed my financial aid counselor, Tammy Eickholt Schroyer, Assistant Director for Financial Aid at University of St. Thomas. “Need-based aid is primarily for transfer students,” she told me, explaining that incoming freshmen receive only merit-based aid. It seems I have been affected in a very good way because I am a transfer student, not a freshman, and I have done nothing of academic merit in a decade.
But that is not a story; that is life. College has been growing more expensive since forever and we usually find some way to attend. In fact Eickholt Schroyer told me that 90 percent of St. Thomas students receive some kind of financial aid.
My same friend also suggested I use the dollar to pay down my student loans. This year I secured a $12,000 private loan that will accrue $9,000 in interest over its (and my) lifespan. I called my lender and asked where I should send my dollar and she directed me to Sallie Mae, because though my lender is TCF Bank, my money handler is Sallie Mae. I do not understand this, but also I do not understand how $9,000 in interest can accrue on a $12,000 loan. I tried to send the dollar to Sallie Mae but relented after wading into a cesspool of confusing voice prompts and alien questions. I found neither a human connection nor a payment option in Sally Mae’s aural quicksand. But a zany piece about how I harassed Sallie Mae operators because I wanted to knock a dollar off my $9,000 interest debt is fluff, not news. My editor’s dollar wasn’t for me to spend on personal gain anyway, so I don’t really know.
Later on while I wrote this I asked a woman at the library what she would buy if she had a dollar. “Some candy,” she replied, “probably something fruity.” Her name was Camille Hutchens and her decisiveness impressed me. I myself could not think of anything to buy offhand for a dollar, so I don’t really know.
News is the story of dollars. How much the government spends and cuts, how much athletes and entertainers earn, how much the rest of us do not have, how much accumulates in profits, how much washes away in storm damage. How much we spend, how much we invest, how much we save, how much we squander, how many pairs of jeans we could – and should – buy. I do not wear jeans, so I do not really know. I don’t really know if we need another story involving a dollar.
After failing to write these stories I walked outside and pulled out my editor’s dollar. George Washington stared at me balefully. George Washington did not have dollar bills because in the 18th century land was money, and he owned around 8,000 acres of land, so he worried about other things, like the British. I held my editor’s dollar up and released it and turned around and did not look back. Perhaps tomorrow I will read about it in the newspaper.