Recession Indicator: Buying My Textbook With 7% APR
By Nancy Feng | Photo by Lizzy Morearty
DISCLAIMER: My professors this semester have been very accommodating and helpful with class materials so if one of you guys is reading this IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU and I love you very much also <3
Forty dollars to my name you spit in my face and as I wipe it off with my sleeve you order me to obtain a mythical collection of printed out PDFs that are all available on the internet for sixty dinero so I say no couldn’t I just print them out myself for fifty seven less dollars that’s a little silly and you say I Will Destroy Your Physical Form And Rend Your Meat Into Ash If You Don’t Buy This Collection of A4 Printer Paper Size Twelve Arial Font Right Now so I say okay and the bu bookstore takes my card with money i don’t have. When I leave the store the rhett statue comes alive to spit at me also
Negative twenty to my pathetic brokie name I get an email from the professor it reads Some Of You Have Been Asking If The Seventy-Second Edition of “A Structuralist’s Approach To Having Gay Sex” That Is Readily Available Like A Tender Blushing Virgin On LibGen Is Acceptable And I Am Emailing To Tell You All That It Is Not. In Fact It’s About As Acceptable As Shooting Me And My Wife And My Dog In The Face And Then Taking A Shit In My Foyer. You Can Find The Seventy-Third Edition (As I Have So Humbly Requested) In Maybe Wisconsin And The Shipping Is Only Thirty Dollars And Also Be Sure To Get The Hardcover Because I Like How It Sounds When You Open And Close It.
Rejoice! Rejoice, however! For it has somehow, likely through divine means, reached the BU bookstore!! Oh goodie!!! Back I go, back into that den of treachery and fraud! I walk there feeling depressed and stupid and ugly and broke and gay.
I ask the Arbiter of Textbooks, who has the head of a lion, goat, and snake, “May I please have this book please” and my card declines. The lion sneers, the snake laughs, and the goat shakes its head in pity.
“Lowly pauper!” The lion booms. “Have you truly been brought so low by your paltry circumstances? Knowledge was never free. Rise above your pitiful station, lest you fall even further!”
“You pathetic little worm!” The snake giggles. “How shameful! How ridiculous to think that the likes of you could have possessed this patrician knowledge!”
“Listen,” the goat sighs. “Tell you what - There is an option you could take. You could lease the book and the down payment would be a lot less.”
“How much would it be?” I ask.
“It’s only fifteen bucks. The thing you have to worry about is the interest rate. The APR is 7%, if you can believe it.”
“I mean….that’s a whole two percent more than my tuition loans…..But I’m sure that I can come up with the full two hundred seven in the coming months….” I trail off.
“I’m sorry, it’s the best I can do. It’s also one of the last remaining copies.” The goat replies grimly, so I sign another part of myself and also any chance of a stable financial future away. The book is mine, until either I pay it off or until I default on a payment and they repossess it. I go home. Whatever man.
Negative thirty five dollars to my name and tears in my Chinese eyes you look me dead in the proverbial eye and tell me to tithe the terrorist organization known as Pearson Education one hundred Real dollars so i can submit my homework for an intro class.