A reader submission: "Fractious Fractured Fairytales."

The following was submitted by Kathleen Martin. Readers, feel free to discuss.

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FRACTIOUS FRACTURED FAIRYTALES

[Recommended: Read the text below with Mr. Peabody's voice in mind.]

Today's episode: Robbin' the Hoodwinked or What's That I Smell?

Once upon a time, very recently in fact, a wealthy landlord purchased a sizable piece of property. It included a big house in front, which he leased to a college fraternity (henceforth the FRATS), with a cozy guest cottage behind just right for the little old lady (LOL) he rented it to. Before any residents moved in, the owner bought a washing machine he felt suitable for the two households to share between them, but he quickly needed to recoup his expenses for this amenity.

So the landlord added to each household's lease the same "minimum use" charge of $10.08 per month and gave the FRATS and LOL each a debit card to activate the washer. A swipe of the card allowed each separate household two wash loads a week, per the "minimum use" clause, and any use beyond that would cost $1 per extra load and charged to the household's card.

Now the LOL only had one load to wash each week, so the minimum fee worked out to about $2.30 for each use of the shared washer. The first two FRATS living in the big house were splitting that $10.08, so their weekly loads cost them just $1 apiece. As the FRATS added tenants, one by one, they were pleased when the cost per load was further reduced, and soon the washer was working away as hard as the students partied, which was a considerable amount. Still, the landlord's smile only grew wider as his revenues mounted on the debit card of the FRATS.

By the time five FRATS had moved in, however, they decided their household deserved a volume discount for all the extra $1 loads expensed to their card. The landlord figured it was a fair enough request -- after all, he wasn't getting anything beyond the $10.08 minimum from his deadbeat LOL tenant -- and so he reduced the price of loads beyond the two minimum a week down to 80 cents, six beyond to 60 cents, ten beyond to 40 cents, and so on. With this volume deal for the FRATS -- now numbering eight -- well, whew-ee, that washer was agitating night and day, often spinning a solitary puked on t-shirt just because it was so dirt cheap. The FRATS continued to party hard, while the LOL could hardly find a time the machine was free for her single load each week.

It turned out the skinflint landlord unfortunately had not purchased a Maytag -- he heard of a real steal on a machine advertised as "worth every penny" -- so by the time there were ten FRATS in residence, the overworked washer broke down one day while the LOL was doing her weekly load. The landlord now had repair bills to pay and replacement parts to purchase, so he felt he had no other choice but to raise the monthly minimum on both households to $20.

The LOL found the new minimum use fee a terrific hardship, but made no protest since she couldn't afford to move from her cozy cottage. She cut corners by taking half doses of her prescribed medicine and buying twice the cat food, though people noticed she didn't even own a cat. The FRATS coped by adding two more tenants and continuing to split the increases, but a month later the newly repaired machine broke down again, and it continued to break down from overuse on a regular basis. The landlord and FRATS remembered the quickest way to pay for repair expenses was again increasing the minimum use fee to both households equally. The LOL was too weak by now to disagree.

Now I'd like to say the landlord, the LOL and the FRATS all lived happily ever after, but that would be a lie. [At least I can reassure you the little old lady wasn't mutilated late last night.] Finally the cottage's tenant stopped taking her medicine altogether, hoarding the pills so that after she'd cut the very last corner she possibly could, she had the means to go peacefully to sleep one night and forget her troubles forever.

The big house tenants graduated and dispersed to places far and wide. Some enjoyed Maytag machines at their new households, and a few of them even learned the high price of not paying for playing. And the landlord? Sadly, no one wanted to lease his cottage due to its inequitable minimum use fee, which he stubbornly refused to see as unfair. The big house also couldn't be rented, because the party-hardy FRATS had trashed it so badly. So, he learned his lesson the hard way. He finally sold the vacant property at a great financial loss, and spent his final years neglected by the staff of a dirty and decrepit nursing home.

The story's moral? Now I'd like to say it's "Waste Not, Want Not," but this fairytale didn't really wind up that way, especially for the LOL. Perhaps instead it's no Bullwinkle, Sherman, that our sewer system and fee structure is on the precipice of a treacherously Rocky cliff. And fixing it revolves around the word "hard": Hardy partying vs. hardship; hardened hearts vs. hardheadedness. From hard choices to hardly caring and from hard sell to hard-pressed. Fix it, yes, but first make it fair.

Kathleen Martin 2/26/2010