Michael's Stories: Episode 1: A Stereotype Exists

All true stories as told by my friend "Michael" and then, with permission, transcribed by me. All names have been changed.

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Today, Michael drove to his school, a local tech college, to figure out how he can register for next semester's classes even though he still owes money for classes from the previous semester.

I'm talking to him on the phone as he arrives and he inadvertently cuts me off with a subconsciously spoken "Whoa, there's a lot of people here." Classes start next week and a hundred students just like him need help because they have also waited until the last minute to register for classes. He tells me he has procrastinated every other semester, as well, but has never had any problems getting the classes he needs.

We're still on the phone as he parks and walks to the WIA office.

"Hey, hold on Chris, what time is it?" I am sitting at my computer desk at home and I glance at the corner of my computer screen, but he continues before I can answer. "It says the hours are 8am to 5pm."

"It's 4:55," I told him.

"Oh," he sighed. "That would explain why they won't let me in."

"So you pretty much drove down there for nothing."

"Well. Hold on."

"What are you going to do?"

"Hold on, I think I can talk to someone else." He starts walking to another building.

"Hey Mike," I start, "I'll just let you go so you can focus" Since you only have 5 minutes, I implied.

"Alright man, talk to you later."

---

He calls me back about thirty minutes later.

"Hey, what's up?" I answer, which is my usual hello. Before I ask if he had gotten everything figured out, I start talking about the gym down the road he had told me about that morning. "Yea, I called that gym you told me about, but its thirty bucks a month, not fifteen."

"Oh, my bad," he says. "Maybe Sara got a deal or something." Sara must have been the friend that told him about the gym.

"It's cool. Thirty bucks isn't bad, I could do that for a month. They also said they give away free guest passes, so, if I went today, they would let me work out for free."

"That's cool," he says.

"So what are you up to?"

He tells me that he is heading over to the animal shelter he volunteers at and that he wants to vent a little bit.

"Go right ahead," I tell him, preparing, for the first time, to remember every detail so I can write this blog later.

He starts by saying that he just wants to talk about something else - so that he can be distracted from his aggravation - and then he goes right into what happened.

Since the WIA office closed their doors on him, he walked over to the building containing his school's financial advisers. The WIA has an office on campus, but is not part of the school and, apparently, they lock up earlier.

Walking into the financial adviser's office, his first impression of the lady that had been stationed to help him and other students like him is that she looks good. And nice. He tells me that he felt that his chances of getting help were promising.

She asks him what she can help him with.

"I have a bill to pay before I register for classes, but I can't pay it off right now, and I need to register for classes... So I need help with that."

"OK" she answers. He tells me that she answered quickly and smiled, but it wasn't really a friendly smile.

He paused to give me a little backstory. He owes nine hundred dollars from the previous semester. He originally arranged to pay it off monthly, but his money got tight (small world?) and he wasn't able to. In order to register for classes, he has to pay it off.

He first asks, "Can FAFSA pay for it?"

"Nope," she responds. Again, terse.

"Can I work with [the school] to pay it off with monthly payments?"

"No."

"Ok. I'm about to get four grand from WIA to pay for my tuition. But, I need my [academic] transcripts. Can I get them from you?"

"No. You can't get your transcripts until you pay off what you owe," she says, adding a trite catch-22 to the story and, at the same time, proving that such cliches are both real and seemingly common.

"I started to realize that I was in a jam," he tells me. In front of the lady, his breath catches a bit in his throat as he tries to restrain the exasperation in his next question. "So what are my options?" He opens his hands in unison with the question and lays them on the table.

She tells him that he can get a student loan. He tells her he doesn't want a student loan. He doesn't want any debt.

"[Our school] is not responsible for something you should have taken care of a long time ago." He swears she must have enjoyed saying it. He knows he could have prevented this, but did she have to say it like that?

As he continues the story, I'm thinking to myself: my friend and everyone at that school is trying to move up in the world. They are self-motivated, they are paying for their own classes... you think that a member of the school's faculty would realize this and give a little help.

He tells me again that he started to feel like he was in a jam. Four months without classes suddenly became a realistic scenario. He has only two semesters left before he can transfer his credits to a graduate school. Four months without classes meant another four months before he could pursue a real career and that he would probably have to get a second job.

At this point, he tells me that he started to feel a twinge in the back of his neck; a small pressure that only arises when he gets truly aggravated. He said the pressure point continued upward into the back of his head and then pressed into the back of his mouth where the only thing he could do to dispel the tension was laugh. So he starts laughing.

Amidst tense chuckling, he musters a final, obligatory question, "Is there anyone else here I can talk to?"

"Nope," she replies.

He starts laughing again. He's laughing because of the tension in the back of his neck and because of his situation. He has become a part of textbook irony. He's laughing because we always hear about these kinds of people - people that seemingly enjoy not helping other people - and here, in front of him, the stereotype turns out to be true and all he can do is laugh. Right in front of him is a real and true stereotype.

The lady laughs with him. They're both laughing. They're looking at each other right in the eyes. He explains the situation, "There was absolutely nothing funny happening, but there we were, laughing and staring at each other. We were two people that (for the moment) absolutely hated each other, just sitting across from each other, laughing. "You bitch," he thought.

He tells me that he could have punched the lady right there. His fists balled up a little bit as a result of the tension pulsing through his body. He lightly, subconsciously, rapped his hands against the table.

"Ok," he says. He stands up and walks out.

---

"Oh man," he chuckles, sounding much more relaxed. "She was so mean!" He laughs again. He says he has almost arrived animal shelter, but if they don't have any volunteer work available for him he would come hang out with me, "Since I'm on your side of town."

"She was probably just in a bad mood," he continues, then pauses. "Yea, I'm going to say that was it."

"That's probably a good way to think about it," I state, never able to say anything is absolutely true. "She was probably dealing with people like you all day," I poke at him.

"Yea, she probably was. Alright, I'll give you a call later."

"Alright, see ya."