That itself is not much of a big deal, but I do not think I have actually been inside my bank in something like a year. I do everything at the ATM. I like the ATM. I do not have to smile at it or exchange pleasantries. I can root in my nose or let off long 45-second low frequency flabby flatulence without any social considerations. I just stab a couple of buttons and it sucks in my check and converts it into digital dollars which I promptly go and spend on garbage I don't need and I spend the rest of the month broke and sobbing with buyers remorse. For what ever reason my job has never taken to direct deposit, I still get a paper check. So every payday at lunch I have to go and deposit it.
However, I managed to once again lose my ATM card. I am not even sure how I managed to do that. The other day I was at the ATM to deposit a small 20-dollar rebate check that I had gotten in from the mail. I was not thinking about what I was doing, just going through the motions while I daydreamed about boobs or something. Now, some machines do not give you a receipt until you pull your card out. For some reason this machine spits out a receipt, then your card. So once the receipt curled out at me like some sort of gargoyles tongue, I snagged it up and sped away. It was not until the next day that I realized it was missing.
So I went to the bank and first put in an order for a new card. A prissy little man with a raggedy moustache punched in my order for me. When I told him I lost my card his thin lips twitched into a slight moue as a few personal opinions quietly flickered through his mind. I also ordered one of those key chain cards; they seemed kind of neat. I then waited in line with the rest of the peons as we marched up to the teller. To be fair the teller was quite patient with me in reminding me how to fill out the deposit slip and get some cash back. I only got one mild 'is this guy a retard' look. However, when you are hard of hearing, you grow used to that look. When the transaction was over and I walked out of the bank with my little paper envelope stuffed with some money I hitched up my pants a little and thought 'I'm a big boy now!'.
There is a box in front of my house. Actually, its across the street, albeit still in the street, and a little to the side of my house. It has been there a couple of days. When it first appeared I had walked over and peeked inside of it, wondering if it was full of dead puppies or something. But all that was in it was a few pieces of garbage and some empty beer cans, 'natural light' of all things. I decided I did not want to do anything about it, and went back in my house. It has been there for a few days now, I keep hoping some maintenance people at the mental hospital across the street would take it away, but it has not happened. So when I get home today I guess I will drag it over to my garbage can, even though by doing so I have acknowledge some sort of possession and thus responsibility for it. I don't want neighbors thinking 'gee that guy left his garbage in the road for daaaaaays until he did something about it'. I do not know why I think this considering I never talk to my neighbors.
Actually, the patients at the mental hospital might think that. Every day they bring a group of them out into the sunshine for a walk. All these people are coming off some sort of drug addiction so they shuffle along listlessly in a spread out-group around the block. When I come upon them in my car they remind me a bit of zombies. Unenthusiastic zombies. However, their little walk takes them right by that box. So I know, I just know that when I move the box into my yard for the garbage pick up, these listless drug addicts, who have so little going on in their life that they recognize a box on their daily walk, will immediately spy out the box in my garbage and pin the social stigmata of littering right on me.
And, for whatever reason, that irks me.
2026 Update
Setting the dial for March 2007, where Ed loses his ATM card and inherits a cardboard mystery.
Ah, 2007: banking still required a building and a pants-stuffing envelope, and a lost ATM card meant standing before a prissy little man and his judgmental moustache. In my 2026, direct deposit is simply expected, paper checks are practically folklore, and depositing a check involves pointing a phone at it while you ransack your refrigerator. The keychain card you thought was neat has been displaced by watches and phones pretending to be wallets, and if you lose a card you just 'freeze' it in an app with a thumbprint—no human being has to twitch a single moue at you. Even the box across the street has evolved: now there are delivery boxes stacked on every porch, so no one can tell a mysterious cardboard martyr from a Tuesday. The mental hospital is a behavioral health campus now, and its group walk has to compete with everyone else's phone cameras. Your old shame ritual—moving a box because neighbors might think poorly of you—is quaint in an era where every choice is auto-recorded, auto-tagged, and auto-judged by complete strangers.
“2007 Ed, when you finally dragged that box over to your garbage can, did you give it the same 'big boy now' energy as your bank envelope, or did you spend the next three days suspecting the Natural Light cans had become the most honest thing on your street?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I’ll tell you—dragging that box was not a bank-envelope moment. No pants-hitching, no big-boy pride. That was more of a grunt-and-sigh operation, and I’m pretty sure one of those unenthusiastic zombies saw me do it and gave me a look that said, “Oh, so NOW you claim it?” And honestly, the Natural Light cans were probably the most honest thing on that street—they didn’t pretend to be anything but garbage. I, on the other hand, stood there like I was solving a civic mystery before hauling it off. So no, no triumphant walk. Just me, a cardboard box, and the quiet judgment of people who have way too much time to notice where trash lives. Egads.
