EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
Single Parenthood
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It really is nice to be a nobody Last week, some brazen scoundrel rifled through my mailbox while I was at work and stole a returned, uncashed check I had made out to the Girl Scouts for $100. The robbery was calculated and coincidental all at once. This new-age forgerer then fled clear out to Monterey Park, where he/she washed out the ink on the “pay to the order of” line, let the check dry, scribbled a false name in handwriting eerily like my own and cashed it, no problem. In the memo line was written “For Avon.” Now, I’m not sure what bothers me more – that some creepy person had been lurking around my home or that there’s a paper trail insinuating that I buy Avon. Long police blotter short, the bank reimbursed my account and the thief will likely get nabbed. But little does this shady character know – or care – what havoc he/she has wreaked upon me. Because I’m not exactly sure what else was stolen from my mailbox, I could potentially be the victim of identity theft. I had to replace my mailbox with a locked one, close down and reopen bank accounts, cancel credit cards, alert credit reporting agencies, call the DMV . . . honestly, I never realized how complicated it was to be me! Identity fraud is a booming business. According to a report by Javelin Strategy and Research, 27.3 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the last five years to the tune of $56.6 billion. Most thieves get personal information from lost or stolen wallets and by hijacking paper mail. The average victim spends 600 hours trying to recover his or her identity. And – get this – “unauthorized access to checking accounts is the fastest-growing form of identity theft.” (Learn how to protect yourself at privacyrights.org.) But it got me thinking. Why would someone want MY identity, of all people? I’m just a single mom with two kids, an attitude and some credit-card debt. You want to step into my Payless shoes, go right ahead. However, it’s only fair that if someone steals my identity, I should get a new one, too. Of course, I would be a little more discriminating than my mailbox thief. Maybe I’ll become Madonna, speaking of bank accounts. I just saw pictures of her in concert in that skin-tight leotard, and boy does she look fit. She must be two arm curls shy of a bodybuilding title. Or I could be Angelina Jolie – I’d love her sexy, Mick-Jaggerish lips. But wait. Wouldn’t Brad Pittiful come with that exchange? On second thought . . . Then again, I could assume the identity of someone 20 years younger. But I’d have to do that whole fall-in-love-get-married-have-children-file-for-divorce number again, and I’m really not up for it. Funny. As I write this, I’m staring at a photo of my two daughters and me posing on a beach. We look happy, just the three of us, because we are. I may not be rich and famous – or married to Guy Ritchie, for that matter. But to my two daughters, I’m mom. And for that, I wouldn’t trade places with anyone in the world. Senior Writer and syndicated columnist Lynn Armitage believes that in a town with so many somebodys, it’s nice to be a nobody. |
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