I Survive Without a Bank Account...but for How Long?

I almost do. In order to receive payments via Paypal I maintain an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bank account that has never had more than $100 in it, and rarely had more than $5.

http://news.yahoo.com/survive-without-bank-account-052806013.html

Of course, in today's e-mail I already received a warning that paying cash and/or storing food may now cause me to be suspected as a terrorist. I'm not going to share the link because it opens an annoying pop-up ad that might leave bad cookies on a computer that doesn't have public-access cookie-blocking mechanisms, but if you read A.C.L.U. or Tea Party stuff you've seen the warnings anyway.

Frankly, they're not as bad as the news from Iowa about how 5% of the alleged Republicans--I doubt they actually are Republicans, and suspect that, whatever their politics may be, they've eaten too much genetically modified corn--turned out to give the Right-Wing Fascist a total of eight votes statewide over the Nobody. Which might just prove that some people in Iowa think either Romney or Santorum looks good on TV, but of course it will be taken as a message that the American people no longer care about our Constitution.

I can't imagine myself being a terrorist or even being seriously believed to be one...except, I have often been told about people in countries that are now our enemies, who allegedly look like me. One of them is a decent person from a good family whose relatives offered to pay me up front to let her impersonate me in order to go to college in the U.S., but I said no, and eventually heard that arrangements were made to get her into school under her own name. Then of course there's the fact that my identity was successfully stolen by someone who couldn't have fooled anyone who'd ever talked to either her or me for five minutes.

So, OK, I'm a quiet middle-aged Christian widow, living a more solitary and frugal life than the average nun, but maybe some people want to believe I am a terrorist. Well, nobody seems to appreciate anything I've done recently enough to pay for it; this is supposed to be a for-profit news'zine, and it's being read by some of the people to whom it's supposed to appeal, but today's e-mail does not contain any payments. I don't especially look forward to growing older as an unrecognized nun. I'd like to see the United States wake up and reclaim what we're all about without violence, but I just might make a good martyr for that cause.

I have important credentials for martyrdom. I'm dead easy for a cowardly fascist to find: I've mentioned that I post from public access computers, which often means that I walk alone on deserted roads at night. (Lots of people want to call themselves my friends and are in fact my physical relatives, but none of them cares enough to drive to and from the computer center with me, even if they also use the Internet.) I've lived longer than the average person in most times and places could hope to live, much of that time in excellent health. More people express envy and resentment of me (see last week's post) than express any desire for me to go on doing anything for anyone else's benefit. Considered strictly in terms of my own benefit, without regard to doing any good for anyone else, my life has nowhere to go but downhill.

So OK, fascists, come and get me. I might prefer to find out how much fun being successful, rich, and happily remarried at 75 could be, but nobody out there is cooperating with me to make that happen, so maybe if the real terrorists just shoot me in the back that might help other Americans wake up.