THE DEEP END
Benjamin Franklin sure got it right when he wrote in 1789 ‘nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.’ Over 220 years later taxes are still just as unavoidable and possibly more painful than death by say stoning or shark attack thanks to a tax code that has become as thick and complicated as Stephen Hawking’s explanation of the universe.
But last month after procrastinating about preparing my taxes and hemming and hawing while the dreaded date of April 17 slowly loomed closer and closer (April 15 falls on a Sunday this year and April 16 is some random federal holiday I have never heard of — Emancipation Day) after throwing out every excuse I had — I don’t have time ‘The Voice’ is on I have to go skiing — I finally buckled down and started going over a year’s worth of bank records receipts and credit card statements. And then I had an epiphany. Doing your taxes doesn’t have to be a form of torture! It can be a (somewhat) enjoyable experience if you look at it the right way.
And what way is that you ask in disbelief?
Much the same as a photo album examining all of your financial papers is like looking at the past year in review. Instead of flipping through visual images of 2011 you are glancing at written reminders that can bring back key moments of your recent history both the good and the bad.
This realization dawned on me when I got to my March bank statement. Five-thousand dollars to Barton Memorial Hospital? Ah yes how quickly we forget or rather block it out — that five grand was dropped after my husband blew his ACL and MCL skiing and had knee surgery. The memories from last March flooded back to me: countless trips down to South Lake driving through blinding blizzards along the East Shore because Emerald Bay was almost always closed; a husband who could pick up our crying eight-month-old but couldn’t carry her anywhere because he could only put weight on one foot; the pure joy we felt when the doctor finally gave him permission to ditch his crutches.
Sifting through the paperwork I also found souvenirs of better times. There on my April statement was $100 for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. That was our spring break trip last year something I hadn’t thought about in months. Along with watching the aquarium’s playful otters dive and swim a highlight of that visit was staying at the farm my sister was working on Live Earth Farm outside of Santa Cruz. While we were there the first baby goats of the season were born a huge treat for my kids. Perusing my May statement $100 to the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company brought my memory back to another road trip to visit my other sister who had just moved to the area. While we were there we visited another farm — Lemos Family Farm which is now a mini-children’s amusement park that hasn’t changed much since the 1940s. Think about the oldest parts of Disneyland subtract a few years and you get the picture.
In May there was also a charge for $200 at Coachcraft Autobody in Reno. That was for damage to my car after a Class IV avalanche hit our house last March during the nonstop snowstorm that was the winter of 2011 another memory I’d like to forget. It took the auto repair shop more than three months to fix my car and my husband’s two trucks. The only good part of all that mess? Our insurance paid for a rental car a huge Suburban perfect for our road trips. My kids still talk about that car.
Some of the ‘account activity’ I came across stumped me. Four hundred dollars to the North Tahoe Fire Protection District? What in the world? Did we have a fire at our house I didn’t remember? And since when did firefighters start charging on a per case basis to protect your home? It took me a while but then it came back to me. That was payment for an incident that happened in 2010 when we had to call 911 in the middle of the night after my son couldn’t breathe. It turned out to be a bad case of croup. In addition to scaring the daylights out of me I learned three things from that event — croup can be treated by taking your child out in the cold night air fire districts charge for ambulance service per mile and it can take over a year to pay it off.
In between all of the major events of 2011 were the things that make up everyday life — charges for gas and groceries and ballet classes and karate lessons. Now that I had turned doing my taxes into a trip down memory lane it made the task less laborious and dare I say even pleasant at times. I can only hope that my new outlook on one of our more despised civil duties will keep me from complaining about doing my taxes next year. After all it was Benjamin Franklin that said ‘Any fool can criticize condemn and complain and most fools do.’
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