ROLAND, Okla.�The bill collector called when Clay Stanley, gaunt and suffering from AIDS, lay bedridden in his apartment, back from the hospital after a bout with a viral infection.

It wasn�t about a car or credit card. The call concerned a matter Mr. Stanley, who is 39 years old, says he had long forgotten: student loans he took out two decades before. The private collector, acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education, said Mr. Stanley must pay $69 a month or the government would take a larger sum than that each month from his Social Security disability checks. Mr. Standley says, "I didn�t know what to do, so I said 'OK,'" he says.

Okay, that is just WRONG.

Hey! I have an idea! If you're going to be cold, uncaring heartless bastards, why not just wait until he dies and take the money you feel you're owed out of his life insurance? (If there is any, that is.) Then you can screw whoever happens to be the beneficiary of his policy. Won't THAT be fun?

I can understand that the Department of Education is tired of letting people slide, but this makes no freaking sense to me. If you didn't care 20 years ago, when he was perhaps healthy and working and making the money necessary to make payments, why bother him now? Why not just give people who are below poverty-level incomes, people with chronic illnesses and/or disabilities and other people who are quite down on their luck, a little break?

I mean, I've read news stories about the latest budget that passed. Chances are that money coming from re-payment of student loans aren't actually going towards anything related to education now anyway.

So, why the rush now? I just don't get it. All I do know is that there's such a thing as collecting what you are owed while also keeping in mind that you don't need to be a sadistic phone stalker who punishes the sick and poor.

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Dear blowing and drifting snow,

YOU SUCK.