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Question catches me off guard

   I was at the bank the other day, applying for my first personal loan. Sitting at a desk opposite a loan officer, I began to answer a series of routine questions.
   They were simple at first and required minimal thinking. You know, questions like: name, address, home phone number, social security number, place of occupation, etc.
   I found myself rattling off answers as if they were permanently ingrained in my brain.
   I felt that the interview was going along quite smoothly.
   However, her next question really caught me off guard. She asked:
   "Any unsatisfied judgements?"
   "What do you mean?" I asked with surprise in my voice. Isn't she getting a bit personal?
   In a serious tone, she began to explain to me what 'unsatisfied judgements' were in 'banking terms.' However, I only half heard her explanation, because my mind began searching for possible responses.
   Four answers came to mind:
   (1) Back in high school, I was unsatisfied with a judgement that I made, when I decided to get a perm. My hair, much longer than it is now, really grasped on to the curls. I looked like I had an untrimmed bush on my head for weeks. I was embarrassed to be seen in public and I vowed never to do it again.
   (2) Once, my old boyfriend invited me to his home in Alaska. He even offered to pay for half of my airline ticket. I declined and chose to visit relatives in Pennsylvania instead. Soon after, we broke up. My chance to see the "Final Frontier" went down the tubes.
   (3) There was a time I had an opportunity to buy a perfectly good 20-inch color TV for $1.00. I declined because I didn't think there was room for it in my apartment. I think about my choice every time I turn on my cheap, 15-inch black and white, blurry TV. (I need to learn how to 'make' room.)
   (4) And finally, I recently had a chance to spend a night free at The Greenbrier, a prestigious resort near the Virginia border in West Virginia, but I didn't go. It would have required me to take one day off of work; and, I didn't want to 'waste' one of my precious vacation days. What, am I crazy?
   These four responses were all at the tip of my tongue; yet, the more I thought about them, the more I realized that these answers really weren't very significant. After all, how important are a perm, a TV and a couple of vacations when you are looking at 25 years of tough decision making? Not very.
   So, I racked my brain to think of some really significant decision that I had made in my life that I was unsatisfied with.
   I couldn't think of one.
   The sound of keys clicking on a computer keyboard knocked me out of my brief daydream, and I noticed the loan officer sitting in front of me awaiting the answer to her question.
   Again she asked, "Any unsatisfied judgements?"
   "No," I replied honestly, "I don't have ANY."

The Herald-Dispatch, March 1995

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