Microstory 2173: Fighting the Cause Captain

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Today was meant to be a day of chilling. I’m done with my last job, and I’ve not yet officially started my new job. I was trying to have a short vacation, because I don’t know how crazy and hectic things are going to be. The facilities staff at the jail are working to get a workspace available to me for Monday. Hopefully they will not have worked too hard at it, because I’m sure I’ll be recovered enough to handle much of it myself. I really wanna get in there, and find and execute my own vision, since I know they have plenty of other work that they need to be worried about. That’s why I wanted to rest for the rest of the week, so I could be prepared for that. Unfortunately, my stress levels are through the roof. When you set up a charity campaign in CauseTogether.hope, there are a number of ways that you can format it. There can be an end date, or not. You can target a specific figure, and refund everyone’s money if it’s not reached, or only refund them if a given percentage of the goal isn’t received, which could be as low as 0%. They can even place a maximum amount, which when reached, will instantly close off all further donations. This should all be told to you upfront on the campaign’s page, so if you run across one that doesn’t divulge what they’ll be doing with your money, or under what circumstances they’ll charge you, report that to the administrators, because that goes against their policy. Anyway, for the campaign that an anonymous stranger set up to pay for my medical bills, they set a min/max of $50,000 with no target date in mind. Why is that number so high? Gee, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the person who did this “on my behalf” doesn’t know me, nor my financial situation. They don’t even know how much my total medical bills are. I wasn’t planning on telling you this, but after insurance, I was only going to have to pay roughly $14,000. I have really good insurance, because the company I work for has really good insurance options.

The CT campaign has ended, because they reached their goal in a matter of days, but I don’t plan on taking a single cent from it for myself. The only reason they reached this absurdly high goal was because I threatened to give the money to an incarcerated serial killer. I don’t think I was ever going to do that. I’ve not even researched who that might be, because I hoped that this remark would spell the end of it. It didn’t occur to me that some donors might give specifically to see that happen. What can a person serving life in prison do with all that money? Give it to corrupt guards so he can get a flatscreen TV, and a king-size bed in his own private cell? I really don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it anymore. I’m fighting the Cause Captain who is still anonymous, and asking for—nay, demanding—my banking information so that they can transfer the money to me. My lawyer says that they would have ways of sneaking me the funds even without my permission. Even though I could theoretically just leave that 50K sitting there in whatever account they ended up creating, people did sacrifice their money, even if it was for all the wrong reasons, so something should probably be done with it. I don’t know what. All I know is that I’m not taking it. My therapist advised me to not get so worked up about it. The deed is done, and I don’t have the power to refund the Cause Champions. I really should donate it to some other charity. Hit me up if you have ideas, I guess. Again, it’s 50,000, so it doesn’t have to only be one charity, if you guys send me multiple good ideas.

Microstory 1046: Myrtle

< > Table of Contents

Roughly eighteen years ago, two babies were born in the same wing of the same hospital, only hours apart. Their respective parents knew of each other, but had never been close, but this one event was something they would always have in common. A year later, they decided to get together for a joint birthday party, and the tradition lived on until one of those children died. Viola Woods and I were never good friends. Though we saw each other in the halls of school, we didn’t hang out together, beyond our annual celebration. It’s not that we didn’t like each other, but we never had much in common, other than something with only one in three hundred and sixty-five chance. She was always very good around other people. She loved them, and wanted to help. It makes me sound like a terrible person that I’m the opposite, but I’m just a proponent of self-sufficiency. I believe in capitalism, and hard work. I recognize that not everyone in this country has been given the same opportunities as others, so I don’t need to check my privilege, or anything. It’s all about affordability, which is a form of capitalism that people seem to ignore. They think anything they buy costs that much because the people selling that product or service have some corrupt control over it. And to some extent, this is true, but there are ways of protecting the consumer without using governmental oversight. Education is the number one solution to all of our problems, and probably the only thing I believe should be extremely inexpensive outright, though not entirely free. The reason you can’t stop hospitals from gouging you for every dime you have, and then some, is because you don’t know where it is they get their prices. We don’t have to have insurance, the simple fact that the government has recently required it is a great example of what’s wrong here.

Health insurance companies have been artificially inflating costs since they first began, and it’s only gotten worse over time. Instead of spending so many resources on free clinics, we should be teaching the citizens the truth, and arming them with what they need to fight back. The healthcare facilities and insurance companies are only able to screw us over because we let them. Viola was a free clinic kind of girl. I’m a free market—power to the people—kind of girl. Alma, you may not have released your interviews yet, but people are already talking about them. They’re sharing their personal stories with each other, and the biggest take away from all this is that Viola spent every waking moment helping others. Every student has been impacted greatly by her acts, even if they don’t fully understand the scope of that impact quite yet. Well, I’m here to tell you that this is not the case for everyone. Viola and I were born on the same day, but we only ever got together to please our parents, who never stopped thinking this piece of trivia was cute. She never helped me with anything. I mean, yeah, she was the only one whose friends came to our parties in the early years, which means I probably wouldn’t have been able to have one without her, unless I wanted to sit there alone. And it’s true that she was born a week later than she was meant to, and her parents, for some reason, attribute this to baby Viola’s will power. No, that’s crazy. Viola didn’t help me by being born on the same day as me, because she couldn’t have done anything on purpose. Right? Is she the only reason I have friends?

Microstory 1027: Howard

< > Table of Contents

Have you ever noticed that we write addresses backwards? If I want to send a letter to my friend at 123 Main Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I make it harder for the mail service to deliver by writing it out like that. We should start with the general, and become more specific from there. The first person at the post office only cares about which country it’s going to. They see Spain, they throw it in the Spain bin. They see Canada, they throw it in the Canada bin. Once it gets to Canada, the next person only cares about which Province it goes to, so put that on the next line. Next person after that only cares about the city, and the next which post office, which means it’s only the last one who cares about which specific building, or unit, it’s meant for. I had this dream that we would completely revamp our delivery system, to make it make more sense. Now, I don’t really know how it works. Maybe I was always wrong, and no worker has any problem hunting for the line that matters most to them. Or maybe the entire address is relevant to everyone who sees it. I just thought there was a better way, but Viola helped me get over it. It’s an insane idea to change something that’s been so ingrained in our way of life for centuries, but she never treated me poorly for it. She gently explained to me that the problem with the way we write addresses has less to do with the order, and more to do with the spacing. The system would work just as well top to bottom, if only we separated the geographical regions more clearly. Anyway, this was really just one carefully explained example of these ideas I have in my head that normal people don’t think about. I obsess over small inconveniences and inefficiencies that most people gloss right over. There are better ways we could be doing things, but in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter much. Viola taught me that, but didn’t let on she was doing it. She taught me that life is not so much pointless as it is too complicated. A lot of good has come from humanity’s advances over the last few centuries, but some have made things worse. Why do we have health insurance? It’s an unnecessary step towards healthcare. We came up with these ways of treating maladies and other medical conditions, and then we muddied it up with a bunch of erroneous programs that do nothing but cause mess. I was getting so bogged down with trying to make this life more efficient, that my life itself was inefficient. Viola helped me shed what she called the extra from my life. Minimalism is key. That’s not to say I’m going to go live in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, and drink milk straight from the udder. But I’m also not going to play by all of society’s rules. My life is going to be simple, and fulfilling, and I owe that to Viola’s ageless wisdom.

Microstory 43: Missed Connection

A few weeks ago, you were driving a blue sedan, and I was driving a small red truck down 31st street. I thought you were pretty, so I was revving my engine and speeding to impress you. You were smiling at me, so I thought you were interested as well. As it turns out, you were only laughing because there was a police officer behind me. He pulled me over and you drove off. He was pretty young, and seemed to understand what was happening, so he didn’t give me a ticket for reckless driving. He was forced to cite me, however, because I couldn’t find my insurance. I appeared at my court date with my new insurance card, and saw the cop again. We had no hard feelings, and got to talking. We ended up having a lot in common, and later went out for coffee together. We have been inseparable since. If this was you, please contact me. I would like to thank you for making me realize that I’m gay.