Equitable Distribution

A young lady enters the store and selects a few movies to rent. When she approaches the counter, she tells Fernando, “I'd like to start a new card.”

“I'm pretty sure you guys still have one in there, actually,” Fernando responds, digging through his Magic Card Box for the individual's in question. Turns out it's nearly full, which would entail the lucky bearer to a free rental. “Yeah, here it is.”

“Well, I'm not with him anymore so just split those up I guess and start me a new one.”

Now Fernando finds himself in a pickle. See, when the two lovebirds first started snogging each other, the female half said to Fernando, “You can just put all of my rentals onto his card.” This system had been in place for close to two years and Fernando doesn't even know how many cards had been filled in that time.

The problem is, of course, that Fernando can't really obscure a take-away yoinking of permanent ink stamps on pieces of paper. Scribbling them out belies that something sneaky is afoot, and at the gent's next appearance certain questions would surely be raised (not to mention voices, most likely. The guy's not the most restrained sort of individual).

Furthermore, the idea of giving half of a free rental to somebody grates on Fernando's sensibilities. Not because he's against retaining custom, heavens no, but because this whole current stamp card-transfer fiasco is fallout from a failed relationship that tallies to around fourteen bucks. She said to Fernando “Put them onto his card,” back then, which entails these rental-stamps were a gift. In the clarity of hindsight, ill-advised gifts, perhaps, but gifts nonetheless.

Once upon a time in legendary days or yore, Fernando procured and had procured for him assorted gift-type things for various ladies he was in the process of courting, sometimes doing silly things (when the hindsight knowledge that things would implode is taken into account) like spending money on meals or shiny baubles or what have you. Upon the inevitable dissolution of these relationships neither he nor the assorted shes up and demanded some form of equitable distribution (title drop!) of these expenditures.

Were Fernando the lady in question, he would say to him(her?)self, “Well, that was stupid of me to have dated that girl (guy?) for two years for basically no benefit to me right here and now. Instead of drawing things out by dragging the movie store guy and his stamp cards into it, let's put this mistake behind me and learn from the experience.” But Fernando is not the lady in question, so the thought experiment and internal dialogues amount to nothing.

In the end, Fernando fulfills her request to create and half-fill a new card so as to maintain tranquility and continued custom in the Dominion from both halves of the severed love-line.