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It's the most larcenous time of the year.....
Published: 12/22/2009 6:12 PM
Last Modified: 12/22/2009 6:12 PM

As I discovered last night, when I came home to find a message that I needed to call my bank as soon as possible.

Apparently someone at some business here in our fair city had taken to copying debit card numbers and using them for his or her own purposes. As I had used my card at this establishment some time in the recent past, my bank was calling to warn me that the card might be compromised and that I should cancel it and start over.

I consider myself very lucky -- if my card number had been appropriated by the miscreant, he or she had not had time to use it.

I haven't been as lucky in the past. About four years ago, someone used my card to finance what had to have been the happiest Christmas ever for a few residents of the Mexican state of Jalisco, with a few thousand dollars' worth of goods from the south-of-the-border equivalent of J.C. Penney's.

My bank determined that I wasn't responsible for these charges, so the money was returned. And my wife and I vowed only to pay cash if we go to a certain restaurant in town.

A great many other people have had much worse befall them -- identity theft that requires years of toil and frustration even to begin to set straight.

There will always be those who will think of "the season of giving" as only a prime opportunity to do more taking. And the sad thing is -- I doubt that visits from the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future could do anything to changes these vermins' attitude.

Oh well.

Happy -- and safe -- Christmas to you all.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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