Credit My Ingenuity

Written by Bob Rehak
Edited by: Julia Wolfe
Joboja Staff Writers

It took me 28 years, but I finally found a practical use for my credit card. Last Saturday night I found myself in the parking lot with a dilemma. My car’s windshield was covered in ¼ inch thick ice, and I had no scraper.

I had hoped that the longer I kept the scraper nice and warm in the garage, the longer it would take winter to arrive. It worked through the month of November. Once we flipped that free calendar on the fridge from our insurance agent to December, senior citizen winter woke up (“old man winter” seems disrespectful).

I had three choices in the parking lot as I spied my wife wiggling her legs outside by the entrance: start the car and blast the defrost, borrow a scraper from the guy next to me who obviously had been a Boy Scout, or use something else to break the ice.

Everyone knows that a watched windshield never defrosts. With gas above $3 a gallon, letting the car run for 20 minutes would have cost more than one of those really sweet scrapers with the retractable handles. Borrowing a scraper from Mr. Boy Scout would have been equivalent to having my Webelos badge revoked.

It also would have been SO much easier. So naturally I didn’t consider it an option. I knew that my caveman instincts would get me out of this mess; in the meantime I started the car.

I put the defrost on “low” to save gas. It would also buy me some time if my wife saw the exhaust breaths. I looked around the car for anything with an ice-breaking edge. My wife’s Oprah magazine had a nice hard spine, but I don’t have enough of one to risk it.

One of my wife’s Celine Dion CDs would have worked, but who was I to deny the family the pleasure of another road trip accompanied by that soundtrack? (I also wasn’t born yesterday. You don’t touch a woman’s purse or her Celine CDs).

Then I remembered my credit cards. How could I forget that stack of plastic? Jammed into my wallet for the past 2 decades, it had given me a permanent dent on my left cheek and made me lean 3 inches to the right every time I sat down. I had 7 handy little designer scrapers to choose from.

The defrost had made matching mouse holes on the left and right side of the windshield. Now it became a challenge. I had to beat the defroster and save the gas. And even though my wife looked cute standing in the cold, I could tell she was losing feeling in her knees and was secretly wishing she had married Mr. Boy Scout. At least I could see her breath, so I knew she was still alive.

I opened my wallet and flipped through the stack like Harry Connick Jr. in a vintage jazz record store. Should I use the Costco card? No, it was my only ticket into Club Costco. The next day was Sunday, the day with the best free samples.

It would be selfish to deny the kids their Sunday brunch. Besides, that fancy black and white image of me—the one that gives me a sneak peek of what my mug shot would look like if I ever get arrested—might get ruined. Costco was out—too many fond family memories.

How about MasterCard? True, I don’t use it very often, but I like the danger of knowing that financial ruin was only as far away as the nearest riverboat. MasterCard was willing to front me up to $10,000 if I felt a hard 7 coming on. How could I abuse a friend like that?

My Amex card is just as friendly as my MasterCard, but he’s more of a loan shark and charges me 30% interest every month if I don’t pay in full. But he never threatened to break my thumbs. Plus he was always offering to send me a self-generating flashlight for an additional $29.

Our relationship was strained but we understood each other. I left Amex alone.

The fourth choice was my Speedway Speedy Rewards card. She gave me points for overpriced gas, which, at the moment I was quickly using up. I could now see whole parts of the car in front of me through the windshield.

Speedy Rewards can be costly, but has benefits. Who can pass up a fun-sized Snickers bar with every $500 in gas? I didn’t want to ruin our relationship. That card was too thin to break the ice anyway, and I’m only $83 away from another snack.

My library card was next in line. As soon as I slipped it out from underneath its leather bed covers, I heard my mother’s voice, “Don’t even think about it, Robert”.

Kohl’s was a very strong candidate. I’ve never received any rewards points. No offers for gadgets even Ron Popiel would reject, and an interest rate that only a banker could love.

As I started to pry it out of its sleeve, I heard melancholy music as I remembered all the good times my wife and I have had at Kohl’s. It’s her favorite store. It knows the meaning of the word “clearance”.

Our children were conceived there. No, not THAT way. They were having a big sale on baby clothes.

We bought a basket full and then needed something to put in the cute little onesies. Too much sentiment in that card, too.

That left me with the card I like to call The Temptress. The ATM card. She is the yin and yang of my existence.

She has helped me sleep at night knowing that she’s there for emergencies. She’s also kept me up at night, not knowing where she’s been. She gives and she takes.

She’s thick and she’s old and she’s been around. She would make an excellent scraper. I got out of the car, grabbed ATM by the magnetic strip, and started to scrape.

By that time the ice fell away like pie crust. I made quick work of the windows, front and back. (I skipped the side windows. Real men don’t do side windows.)

My wife was motioning me over. She needed help getting her heels unstuck from the sidewalk. I drove around and picked her up.

Sure, it would have taken a lot less time if I had brought a scraper, but at least we missed all the traffic.