If you have children in college, as we do, then you get the emails. They’re tuition bills and university foundations dunning for donations.
We ignore the foundation requests, clicking “delete” perhaps too aggressively. What parents not named Bezos, Bloomberg, Buffett, Gates or Zuckerberg gift money to a university while still paying tuition?!
We pay the tuition, of course, as we did last month in making a final payment for the fall semester to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where one of our children is a senior.
UNC is a fine institution, and we’re proud of our daughter for her academic and social success while there.
Alas, that final payment was not the semester’s last. A bill arrived this week saying we owed still more.
“Amount: $0.06.”
We discussed dispatching our daughter to the bursar’s office with a nickel and penny. But that would have been unkind – to her.
A computer database was to blame. No sentient human clerk if given actual coins could interrupt the unsparing database’s mindless momentum.
We authorized an electronic payment.
Amount: 6 cents.
