Kevin,

Over a week ago I mailed you your signature page for your tax filing. . .replete with a stamped SASE envelope to return it. Did you not get it ? We need that page for filing. Let me know the status of this NOW! We also note no deposits to your credit union account. Are you still working or what? GET THAT SIGNED TAX FORM BACK NOW!

Dad

Dad–

I sent the tax form back earlier this week. I got it on Saturday, and put it in the outgoing mail on Monday. Perhaps it didn’t get sent until Tuesday.

As for the deposits, I am still working, and I have a shitload of checks to deposit. I’m leery of using the machine at the local credit union, for fear that they might not get put into my account back home. When I asked a teller there what the situation was, she said it should be okay for me to use the ATM, and there is a place on the deposit envelope to write in the name of the credit union. There’s also a space for a member number, and I don’t know what that would be.

So basically I’ve been accumulating paychecks and trying to decide whether I should deposit them or not. I don’t want them to get lost or something. Maybe I can collect enough paychecks to bankrupt the college when I finally deposit them all... I bet you’d like that. So expect that tax stuff pretty soon... the papers are in the mail.

–Kevin

Kevin,

Either I or your mother will send you along some deposit envelopes so you can put your paychecks in them all ready to be deposited and send them back up here. I would not recommend leaving your checks uncashed because that college you seem to like so much happens to be run by a huge bureaucracy, and bureaucracies at times seem to exist for no other reason than to fuck over the people who have to abide by their decisions. If you let those checks expire, Pomona will not want to pay you. Period. It makes no difference to them that they have an endowment large enough to stop collecting tuition for 10 years or so, assuming no new donations over that frame of time, they’ll refuse to give you your money so that some pencil-pusher doesn’t have to heave themselves all the way to the file cabinet down the hall and make a few changes in paperwork contained therein. Actually, said pencil pusher is more likely to need only to call up a few files on their computer, but you get the picture.

My friend Tom from college worked for the Federal government, and he had a sofa-bed in his office so that he could nap during the day. I know Pomona College administration hasn’t quite reached the levels of laziness and incompetence found in our halls of government, but considering their dedication to pseudo-academics and spoiling the students with a bedtime snack, (full bellies keep the populace unaware of the corruption around them) they can’t be far behind. It’s a tough world out there.

–Dad