I have a friend who owes me $30 from a night out around six months ago. He has refused to pay me even though he knows I’m right, trying to shrug it off as a casualty of partying together. Now he is completely avoiding me and I have lost all respect for him. The amount is insignificant and is hardly going to break the bank but it’s the principle of the matter. How do I tell my friend he is a tight-arse?

Thirty Dollars Poorer, Fortitude Valley

Dear Thirty Dollars Poorer,

Once, I had a pair of roller skates shipped from where all good roller skates come from – Miami – and I was dying to get into the skating spirit. As a child, I’d always dreamt of whizzing along the street in a pair of speed skates; instead, I was relegated to the Fisher-Price plastic clip-on model that had a top speed (with a tail wind) of a snail’s pace and made the most unattractive plastic scraping sound and vibrated intensely. These days, I don’t think I would refuse the vibration for want of stimulation, but the jarring motion surely can’t be any good for my teeth. You can imagine my delight when my shiny new speed skates arrived, jet black with fluorescent yellow stripes and matching wheels; ready to tear the rink and the skin on my knees apart. At the risk of sounding like a dork, I’d invested in the matching kneepads and wrist guards, however, they remained in the bottom of my wardrobe along with my silver and red patent leather winklepickers (big mistake!) and a never-used Sony Dreamcast (without its what-the-hell-is-an-RF cable).

One day in sleep-deprived delirium, I decided that it would be a great idea to take them out on their maiden voyage after a decidedly large night. At first, it was meant to be a short sprint on the bicycle path behind my house for no longer than five hundred metres, however, once I my confidence increased, I roamed further and further afield. I was free: riding high with the asphalt below my feet and the wind in my hair. I was sex on eight wheels. Then I hit the freeway.

Cut to a twenty-year-old, gangly waif attempting to traverse the overpass precariously like a newborn giraffe during peak-hour traffic. Hardly the glamour I had imagined, although I remained focused and persevered. I was up hill and down dale, negotiating corners like a rally driver, experiencing near misses of involuntary somersaults at the bottom of steep descents and I almost lost a wheel to the grate of a stormwater drain. I was having so much fun, pushing my roller skates to near breaking-point, further than I ever expected them to take me that I was completely unaware of the distance I had travelled. Before I knew it, night began to set in and I stood there frantically assessing my situation: I was wearing roller skates and didn’t have a pair of shoes to change into; I was at least a good twenty kilometres from my home; I had a quarter-inch of water in the bottom of my water bottle; and my mobile phone only had a tiny bit of charge left in it. Rather than thinking sensibly and calling someone for assistance, I tried to figure out a way to short circuit the battery from my phone in order to start a fire to keep me warm in the night like a foppish hybrid of the McGyver and the Bush Tuckerman. I’d rolled myself into a corner.

Your friend sounds like he is the kind of guy who would rip off his grandma and feed her the Pal instead of the My Dog on pension day; and people like this need to be put to a stop. Like my roller skating (mis)adventure, I pushed my wheeled friends to their limits, took a risky path and found myself lost in the middle of nowhere without an escape route. When loans are overlooked, you can understand and empathise with the person when their inattention to your credit line has been an oversight. When it’s unabashed defiance, then you have reason to be upset. As your so-called friend is unwilling to cooperate, put it down to experience and write him off along with his debt. Sure, you won’t recoup what you are rightfully owed, yet you’ve gained insight into his true personality. If he is going to quibble over such a nominal sum, he isn’t worth the paper or plastic it’s printed on. Strap on your fanny pack, pull your socks up and get skating. Roller skaters make better lovers. True story.

I do believe there’s more for you to read: