Thread by @tressiemcphd

Let me tell you a short story about one of my first secular sociology lessons. This tweet brought it to mind

First, let me tell you that there are few things as bureaucratically cruel as the way we treat children who have pretty crummy parents except how we bureaucratically turn parents into crummy parents. Case: kids whose parents stole their identity.

Credit systems make it almost impossible for a person to live after a bad spell or bad mistake like an eviction, an unpaid utility bill or a defaulted student loan. And there’s your kid with your dream: a clean slate. And a clean slate will help you take care of your kid.

So kids end up with utilities in their name or credit cards when they’re eight years old, whatever. Anyway, I had a friend once with a roommate who was in this predicament. We were young and therefore had the perspective of a gnat.

We tried to get my friend out of his joint lease with his roommate by pleading our case to the apartment leasing agent. We made the first naive mistake: we told the truth and all of the truth. We said the guy’s credit had been hijacked by his mom so he lost his job etc

The agent wasn’t hearing it. My friend was stuck in the lease. Me, a smartass, gets us a consult with a lawyer. We plead our case.

The lawyer looks at us and said, “here’s where you went wrong. You told your creditor that you’re the one with the ability to pay. Why would they let the solvent roommate out of the lease?”

I started to get that there was something out there I needed to understand so that I could understand other things.

(An actual smart person would have known that you call the lawyer BEFORE you speak to the creditor smh)