the payoff

The last weekend of every month I pay bills. Some are more painful than others.

Scribbling a check every month for the last decade to The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority has become second nature,.. as habitual as reaching for a cigarette after sex.

I was scrawling the number “5” to form $50 when I glanced at the balance… $152.72. I stopped dead in my ink tracks…. and smiled.

I now, after ten years, own the education in my head.

It’s a weird feeling.

I remember, (like it was only a couple of years ago), saying to myself at graduation: “God, I’m going to be paying on this till I’m in my thirties!”

Well.. I’m in my thirties… With an 8″ x 10″ reciept which reads “Bachelor of Arts Media Communication and Photography, Webster University, Saint Louis, 1994”.

I’m half tempted to take a sharpie to my diploma and write “PAID” across it and hang it on the wall.

I’m not tempted however to blog about this.