I’m not a gambling man, unless trying, on foot, to cross the main street of my hometown on Saturday morning counts.
I’ve bought, I suppose, 10 lottery tickets in my lifetime and half of those were probably Christmas gifts. But lately, I have been playing a little game of win-or-lose almost on a daily basis with a small piece of plastic I carry around in my wallet. It’s called a debit card and if you haven’t caught onto this game yet, you might want to try it out. It’s quite thrilling.
Here’s how it works. You go into a store and buy some groceries or into a restaurant and order a meal. When it’s time to pay, you hand the cashier your tiny blue Passport to Paradise. She swipes it through the little black box on the counter, the amount you owe comes up on the box’s small screen, and then you punch in the pertinent criteria: OK followed by your four-digit bank card number.
Here’s where the fun starts. Will or will not the bank approve your off-site withdrawal? You hover nervously over the debit box like an addict over a slot-machine, beads of sweat beginning to appear on your forehead as the transmitter seems to be having some doubts about your solvency. Finally, APPROVED appears and you rejoice. You have won yourself a bag of breakfast cereal, potato chips and margarine, a meal of a nice bacon and tomato toasted with fries, gravy and coleslaw.
However, as with all high-stakes games of chance, you can’t always be a winner and when you are not, the mortification is complete. The card is swiped, the box phones the bank and after too long a time, the screen reads, “INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.”
Here is the drill. You feign astonishment at such a turn of events and protest that the machine must be faulty. To humour you, the cashier swipes your card through again, as your mind races for a solution. Like a broken record, the box repeats the news that you have nada a penny in your chequing account. The cashier looks at you with daggers in her eyes as she has already rung up and bagged the 14 grocery items on the conveyer belt and doesn’t really want to undo her labour for the pauper standing before her. However, nothing has been consumed so you can at least bolt for the automatic door and run and never look back.
Squirming out of the same predicament after downing a $15 meal is not quite so clean and easy. The food is inside you and cannot be returned to the shelf. It is amazing how quickly restaurant owners and managers can make the leap from happy to see you arrive to anticipating with good cheer your departure.
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Similarly, in line at a sub shop at noon, as you stand in front of the cashier with your sandwich – neatly made up and warmed – and seven people waiting behind you, the humiliation knows no bounds when the little black banker on the counter announces that your financial house is out of order. This is where you get to run back breathlessly to your office to ask for a $10 loan from the kitty to pay for the error of your ways.
And then there is one other variation on this game which can add further excitement. The swiping of the card part is easy, of course, but the second stage – remembering the four-digit number – sometimes renders even the gutsiest gambler powerless. You stand in the fast checkout at the food store, and as a line grows in numbers and impatience behind you, you punch various combinations of your number but are denied access to your funds every time. It turns out, while you have the four numbers correct, there are 256 ways to combine them. You are going to be here for a while – until the public lynching, that is. Finally a friend named Fred reaches into his pocket and brings out some strange material called “cash” and pays for your groceries, as he is not able to stand the sight of death by mob!
To those of you who carry a couple hundred dollars in your wallet at all times to pay for the wants of life, I say, go ahead and enjoy your boring existence where everything is planned out and there are few surprises. I’m afraid you will never know the thrill of walking the high wire of commerce where nothing is assured.
As for me, I prefer to soar with the eagles, even if sometimes I find myself screaming like they often do.
And as long as I have a friend called Fred, I can see no real need to change my chancey ways.
©2004 Jim Hagarty
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