A common phrase from my childhood.

"I pay my bills."

I knew people who said that through missing teeth, in regional accents so grossly malformed they could barely be understood by people two states away.

I had a little hospital work done recently. Nothing under the hood, more like an alignment.

And the insurance paid, and now I pay what's left.

And so I get bills every month. I get bills from the doctor, the hospital, the physical therapy place and several suppliers of things like crutches, walkers, anesthesia, things like that.

And I send everybody some money every month, 5 to 10 percent of what I owe — more when I've got more money.

The hospital was fine. Offered me a monthly payment that was lower than the amount I was already sending them. They don't charge interest on my debt, either, which means they're still more focused on surgery than they are on usury.

The smaller providers are much more in the loan shark mode.

I owe them $100 for a walker, I send them $20 a month for four months, I get the balance down to $20, and they send me a notice saying if I don't get up the last $20, they'll turn me over to a collection agency.

And I get mad because, hey, I pay my bills.

My wife, who is 12 years younger than I am, is a reporter who has spent a lot of time on the health beat.

"Don't get mad," she says. "It's just something their computer kicks out if you owe money for over 120 days."

"Yeah," I say. "But I'm no deadbeat. Why are they treating me like one? I owe. I pay. Everybody knows that."

"Who knows that?" she says. "They don't know you. They just send the same notice to everybody."

"They should send it to everybody who doesn't pay," I say. "I been paying them.

"And not insulting little $2 payments, either," I say. "I owed a hundred, they got 25 percent of it the first month.

"I feel like not paying them at all," I say. "They wanna treat me like a deadbeat, I'll show 'em a deadbeat."

"You don't have to pay them anyway," she says. "People stiff medical bills all the time. If you don't pay, they bother you for a year and then they give up.

"If you don't pay, what are they gonna do, come rip the tendon back out of your knee?" my wife says.

I wrote the check. My wife knew I'd write check. I always write the check. I'll write checks until the whole debt is gone. I pay my bills, and I'm stunned when other people don't.

Apparently that attitude is as out of fashion as the pinky ring I won't quit wearing.

You're a deadbeat until proven innocent. My credit card company banged me for a $35 late fee last year when I was four days late with my payment. I hadn't been late with a payment for 15 years. I called them, and they took the $35 off my bill, but couldn't they have looked at my payment record before they hit me with the $35?

No. Nobody looks at anything anymore. To do that, these companies would have to hire another $32,000-a-year clerk, and that would cut into the CEO's 25-year-old wife's Botox budget. Better to treat me like a thief.

What they don't know about me is that I pay my bills. Hell, if I REALLY couldn't pay, I'd sell my pinky ring to get the money.

And the computer that sends out the deadbeat notice wouldn't care at all.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.