Yes.  You read the title right.

Let me repeat.  Are you a credit card?

Are you sleek and shiny?  From time to time, I may act like a credit card, sleek and shiny.  My friends, family, colleagues, friends of friends, and clients will see the sleek and shiny me.  They will see my best foot forward.  They will see my shiny smile and my sleek attitude.

From time to time, not ALL the time.  I think there’s a need to be sleek and shiny from time to time.  You need it for specific occasions.  For example, when you go over to your boyfriend or girlfriend’s house, you smile politely even if you don’t get along with one member of the family.  You pretend you like your mom-in-law’s cooking, even if you think you just ate cardboard.  At work, you are all sleek and smile with your boss or colleague even if you think they are jerks.  Perhaps your boss or colleagues are all sleek and smile with you because they think you are a, well, uh, you know…

Are you sleek and shiny?  Are you sleek and shiny…a PLASTIC?  Me, I am from time to time.  I put up a front.  I put up a defense.  That’s from time to time.  Not so much, though.  I know when to play my cards right.  I know when and where to charge my credit cards.

Are you plastic from time to time, just like me?  I admit, I do behave like that once in a while.  I can’t help it.  I’d rather be polite than cause a commotion.  Maybe that’s just discretion.  Not so much being plastic.  Maybe I’m not plastic after all.  Ah!  Self-revelation.  I wasn’t being plastic.  I was just practicing discretion.  Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valor.  So there, I am not a plastic from time to time.  I am just polite.

Being plastic, therefore, involves a lot more.  It involves a chronic attitude.  It involves habitual behavior.  Being plastic means the negativity, the fakeness, the falsehood run in deep in your blood.  It is entrenched.  You are not just a “from time to time” or “once in a while” person.  You ARE plastic itself.

We have friends who are plastic.  We have bosses who are plastic.  We have family members who are plastic.  We have colleagues who are plastic. Are you one of them?

I hope not.  I hope I don’t become one either.

So are you a credit card.  You look sleek.  You look shiny.  You look like you got lots of credit.  But deep down inside, you have lots of debt.  You are overdrawn.  You have zero balance.  Your interest is high.  You are about to file bankruptcy?  Worst of all, you go to the check out counter, with lots of goodies in your cart, and your credit card declines!!!

At the end of the day, you are nothing but a piece of plastic.

So, are you a credit card?  Do you know people who are plastic?  Beware, I maybe one of them.  Hehe.