Who the heck ever gave these keepers-of-the-score the authority to make everyone miserable? Where did these denizens of blacklisting get their information? From which cesspool did they first crawl, and how, and why?

Ah, the great unanswered questions regarding the Big Three credit bureaus.

For months, we’ve been paying off debt – mostly medical, accumulated at a time when my trustee decided, in his infinite wisdom, that health insurance was not a viable expenditure as per the words, “health, education, and welfare”. But I digress.

Just as the credit score is inching its way upward, it dropped. Significantly. Why?

Mostly because these places are way too self-important. Are they owned or run by the government? I don’t think so, but there is no information, even on the Internet, about their history or management. It’s quite possible, since they seem to be staffed by idiots, take a lot of money from confused and unsuspecting customers each month, and are hopelessly inaccurate in their collective reporting.

Who the heck gave THEM the right to crawl inside our lives? One theory proposed is that they sprung from the old days of powerful unions and break-your-kneecaps collectors. Possible, I suppose. But no one really knows.

I’d almost rather deal with broken kneecaps.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Your credit card bill is due, say, October 1st. You go online after work, on September 30, to pay the bill. Oops, the company says it can’t possibly process this payment, online no less, within 24 hours, so you can pay a “rush” fee of $12.95, or the payment will be considered late. Yes, it’s a junk credit card, but still – either you pay the fee, or you’re late and reported to the credit bureaus.

Now, credit bureau A will not bother to report that; B will say it was late; C will say it’s on time.

Imagine that you’re on your last, final car payment. You pay it, you celebrate, and then you check your credit report. Credit bureau A says you paid, on time; B says you still owe that payment; C says you owe two payments.

Credit bureau A shows accounts you never owned; B shows the wrong creditors and/or amounts; C has your work history or addresses mixed up with someone else, often an ex-spouse.

Try negotiating with a creditor. They SAY that they’ll remove something from the reports, or not report it at all, but they lie. A lot. Or it takes them two months to take care of it. Why? For heaven’s sake, this is the Internet age!

And why do we have three credit bureaus? Surely one is enough to screw up everyone’s lives, isn’t it? Who the heck is Fair Isaac anyway, and what is his freakin’ problem? Fair, my fanny!

The other day, I asked my son if he had any ideas for a blog post. Of course he did – he said I’d griped and complained about him, blogging about all the negative things going on, and wasn’t it time for a more positive treatise?

I considered what he said, thought about how many months we’d been dealing with his poor behavior and, as well, how far he’d come since then.

So here it is.

I won’t bore anyone with all the details over the years of my son’s life, the lies, the behavior, the attitude, the police calls, and so forth. Suffice it to say, since last January, things have changed a great deal.

When he was expelled from school, and unable to return to a previous one, we gave him a choice: get his GED and a job, or attend an alternative school. I’ve said, for many years, that he wants to be grown up so badly, more so than any other teenager I’ve ever known, that the first option would seem to be a good one. Not for every teen, certainly, but maybe for him.

He got a job, two actually, and we sent off for all the paperwork for his GED. He refused to go sign up, let alone take the exam. His behavior, outside of work, was not two steps forward and one back, but the opposite.

Within a month, he was sent to detention, courtesy of the county. Three weeks later, released on probation, he seemed to “get it”. For about a week. Then he was removed from our home.

He’s been in foster care ever since.

Finally, in June, my son took – and passed quite handily – his GED. By August, he’d enrolled in the local community college. He continued to work until classes started, has been in therapy both alone and with the family, and seems to be doing well in school.

His attitude has improved immensely.

We’ve been able to see him, since July, at least once every couple weeks; after he started college, he comes over more frequently. We’ve even had a few overnights. He’s been pleasant, good company, obedient, and mostly a hard worker when he’s here and we have a “project” to accomplish.

He says he enjoys college a lot more than high school and, even at not quite 17 years old, has had a couple of “study dates” with a few different girls. That, of course, is what’s most important to him!

Most likely, he’ll be coming home in a month. We’ve talked about his driver license, a car, continuing college – he wants to go off to a university next year – and the house rules. He’s seems very cooperative. I only hope it lasts when he’s actually here.

And, right now, I have no reason to believe otherwise. He seems happy, and busy, and he wants to come home again. And we certainly want him back.