My confession: I owe Pac Bell $800. And I'm not paying it back

I owe about $800 to Pacific Bell. It's a completely legitimate debt. Some of it is basic land line charges, some is long distance, some is DSL.

At the time of the original billing, I did intend to pay, eventually. But a series of incidents helped me to rationalize that the phone company is an evil adversary that doesn't deserve my money.

First, there were the increasingly threatening letters to shut off my service. I remember one that actually included a bulleted list of communication tools, such as email, that I would lose, if I didn't have DSL. Well, that's not true. My email account was with a separate company, and I would still be able to access it from school or on stolen wi-fi. The condescension of the letter irritated me.

And then I remember the moment that I picked up the receiver, tried to dial, and got the message that my phone was not in service. The dial tone was still there in case I had to call 911, but it struck me as a tease. If they were going to shut it off, why not just shut it off all the way? I fumed.

Months after the phone was shut off, the collection agency was calling my cell. The agent I spoke with, who sounded younger than me, seemed incredulous at my nonchalant attitude. I was willing to talk for as long as he liked, but I would not agree to a payment plan. "I'm not sure if you realize that this is bad," he said. "So, if that's not clear, then let me tell you. It is. This is bad." "Compared to what?" I asked him.

I left town and ended up on the other side of the country, with a different cell phone number and carrier, but I'll be darned if they didn't catch up with me anyway about five years later. "I need a call back," was the crisp voicemail from the agent. How rude, I thought. To teach them a lesson in respect, I didn't call back. Eventually, the agent called when I was available.

"I don't remember that bill," I said. "Why don't you send it to me?" The new collections agent, who sounded more my mother's age, said it was obviously my bill and my request wasn't going to help things. I told her I have a common name, and we needed to be sure. She agreed to send the bill.

I received the bill. It was mine. And yet, I asked myself, was it really? After all, years had passed, and I had changed. Become more responsible. And the new, responsible me wasn't the person who generated that bill. That was the old, irresponsible me. I decided that the phone bill was the old me's problem, and that I would let him handle it.

Two years ago, when I was pulling down a six-figure salary, I found the bill while cleaning out some old boxes. I flipped through its many pages, reminiscing about all the ways I had avoided paying it. I could pay it now, I thought. Wouldn't they be surprised?

But I looked inside my heart and I found that I just didn't care. At one level, I knew that all my negative experiences with the collections process had just become a pile of rationalizations for not paying. But at another level, the financially stable me felt a sort of stubborn alliance with the older, irresponsible me. I wouldn't pay it when it had actually made sense do so, I thought. Why should I pay it now?

I stuck the bill in a drawer, where it remains to this day, as a sort of memento to my personal integrity, or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it.