Breathing more easily now

Yesterday, I was a nervous wreck. You see, it was looking very likely that Chris was the victim of identity theft. Suddenly, we were feeling very freaked out, very violated, and very unsure of what was going to happen next. And I was very mad that this would happen right before my birthday. (Of course. Because I really do have that selfish tendency.)

You see, we were in at the bank, and the rep had to look up our credit histories. She suddenly got very concerned, and said that there was some kind of warning on Chris's account, regarding a credit card that had never been paid and had gone to collections. The credit card was with a company and a bank that we'd never dealt with before. She was especially concerned because this was looking very much like identity theft.

She gave us numbers to call, but then it was time for Chris to go to work. And I had a day to stew over it. I hardly got any work done, and just baked and avoided talking with anyone, for fear that I'd break in half. Although I'm thankful for my goal group and Phantom's Wednesday Whiners. I encountered a suprising number of people who had experienced identity theft, all of whom said the same thing: it's a pain, but now that you've noticed it, it's going to work out.

I woke up before my alarm clock this morning, and then nagged Chris until he called the numbers. Once he called the first place and got the details, it started becoming very clear that this wasn't going to be a big deal and that it was going to be very clear that this had nothing to do with him. Apparently, it's an unpaid bill for $50 from 2000, before Chris even started University (and, oddly enough, when he was living in a small town that didn't even have that bank). He called that bank, and they asked him for personal information to identify himself. None of his personal information matched up and so they couldn't even tell him more about the account, because it was obviously not his account. There's a very good chance that it's either someone with the same name as his, whose history accidentally got put onto Chris's, or some very half-hearted identity theft indeed. All he has to do is walk down to TD, present his ID, and they'll remove all of this from his records.

I'm very thankful right now. I'm thankful that this was not as bad as I had imagined it, yesterday. I'm also thankful that we're getting this off of his credit history, long before we're going to be in the market for any kind of mortgage or anything. We're going to be okay.