Not a baby's visage. But credit cards, the pernicious plastic plague.

Recall when the 3-D logos first adorned them? You tilt 'em and the Visa eagle or MasterCard- rings give you that micro-Avatar thrill--without the glasses. Then came the jubilation of personalization: customize your card with your pet's mug, your cherub's rosy cheeks, your favorite car--all gleaming chrome and heavy-metal grille, corny vistas, juvenile seal pups, fair-weather-team's mascot... or a "skin" of homemade art that you fancy is art. Whip the card out of the wallet you had bought with said card--like a joey that begat mama kangaroo--from your designer-labeled back pocket and the world's your oyster and it's full of pearls. How could such a cheery piece of plastic bring harm? It's even relatively cleaner than a greenback.

You'd reckon that the understated 2-D standard-issue cards of yesteryear were less tempting, no? No. As I relate below, the temptation of credit is nothing new under the sun, as wise Solomon would say. As I'm feeling Biblical, today, I'll quote and annotate the oft-quoted reverential reference to debt in Deuteronomy 15:1-2:

At the end of every 7 years, thou shalt make a release [aka chapter 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 bankruptcy]

And this is the manner of the release [procedure under Title 11 of the United States Code]: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbor shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother [as such act would violate the automatic stay of 11 USC 362(a) and the effect of discharge per section 524].

Of course, there's the less-oft-quoted verse 3 of chapter 15:

Of a foreigner, thou mayest exact it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release. [Oh well.]

Yet, we needn't look back 3000 years to discover the temptation of debt. Here's a pre-customized-3-D-credit card tale circa 1972: Stephen and Tabitha King were in debt then. Stephen King hadn't yet sold Carrie, his news-article structured tale of a telekinetic girl. Credit cards were his bane. He came home one day after teaching English to aspiring writers (like himself). Tabitha sat at the kitchen table. Credit cards laid on it and in her hands were dirt-encrusted garden shears. Now, in your typical King novel, such a sharp implement would do less subtle work. But Tabitha employed it to slice her cards. Then she directed Stephen to follow suit. A happy wife means a happy life, so Stephen obliged: his cards were sliced. Cutting a card is a simple, yet symbolically powerful act. It breaks shackles.

How does debt occur? Divorce, job loss, illness. Life has its rainy days. Let's say you're buying on credit, 'cause times are good: your employer pays well, you're happily married, and you're healthy as a horse (well, a healthy horse). You'll reap the benefits of purchasing on credit. Life can only get better: your income will double and treble and the credit will be paid off when the time comes. The creditors collect finance charges and everybody's happy. But the economy's cyclical. Depression follows the Gatsby-ian days when the good times roll. Don't count on paying off the debt if you can't pay it off now. Call your credit card a convenience card and pay it off in full.

One final illustration why plastic is bad, paper is good (as with your preferred methods of both payment and bagging at the supermarket): if you're making minimum payments on a credit card debt of $10,000 at a common 29% interest rate with minimum payments of 3%, you will end up paying $50,198 over the course of half a century.