Remember back when the electric company meter man would come around and check your electric meter then charge you for the difference in power since your last reading? It’s amazing how much we’ve progressed as a society since I ripped the power meter off of the back of my house and bypassed the monitoring system to get free electricity.
We used to be so petty and greedy, always scrambling to get more money than the next guy. All we used to care about was having the fancier car or the newest phone or the biggest TV. It’s great that we’ve come so far, and now when I lie to the meterman and tell him some punks must have stolen my meter, again, we can just coexist as human beings instead of getting into an argument about material goods.
When I talk to the power company lady on the phone now after she says they’ve begun a criminal investigation into my possible fraudulent activities, I feel a deep personal connection, like it’s not motivated by money, because I know that they’ll never find the meter at the bottom of the Mississippi, and they’ve got no reliable way to measure how much power I’ve used.
That cop that came by and issued me a summons talked to me like we were both partners in the journey of the human experience, instead of a representative of an extortionate government hell-bent on extracting as much wealth from me as possible and telling me it’s for my own good. When I told him there wasn’t a god damn shred of evidence that I was involved and that they’d never get a fucking cent out of me, I felt our shared humanity in a way I knew I never could in the capitalistic days that came before.
What a time to be alive.