the dreaming tree

so here’s what happened:

i was driving home from illinois, and the lovely joan, and stopped to fill up with gas in springfield, mo. i put in $29 and went to pay at the register. i looked in my wallet and only had a $20 left, so i gave them my debit card. and the machine rejected it. they tried a few times, and it kept rejecting it, so i went to the atm in the station and it did the same thing. their computer actually told them to confiscate my card and cut it up, but i showed them my ID and everything and so they called arvest bank to see what was up. arvest talked to me to verify my name and address and SSN and then told the store that they weren’t sure what the problem was because, according to their computer, the card and account and everything were normal and working and all that. so they told the lady that they’d contact the credit card dept. or whatever and call back in five minutes. well, when they called back, they just told the lady that the card had been reported lost or stolen and to confiscate and destroy it. i was like, awesome, cause i only had $20 to pay for $29 of gas. they called the owner and he told them to call the police and basically i got a ticket for petty theft for stealing gas because i couldn’t pay for $9 of it. and i’m supposed to appear in court on november 5. obviously i have to go because if i pay it that is admitting guilt and then i’ll have petty theft on my record and also my license will be suspended. now, i think that the bank is liable for all this because it should have been working. in fact, i had just used it earlier at wal-mart. so i’m going to be suing arvest bank for $300,000. ok, maybe not, but i defintely am needing to work this all out, so prayer would be appreciated.