You get the chequebook out, write up the thing and put it in the envelope. No stamps. Days go by before you remember, while in line at the checkout, to buy some. Of course, not every checkout sells stamps so you wander around to find somewhere that does. Everywere but the post office, that is.
Stamp successfully affixed to envelope (what’s an envelope, asks child under 20), stage three approaches – the actual depositing of the envelope with its promissory note enclosed into a red postal box.
As I write, this is a challenge that has not yet been met. The envelope has sat on the passenger seat day after day as the van has driven happily by every red postal box in sight. If there were green and yellow ones, the van would whiz by them too.
Arriving home, curse words escape the mouth at the sight of that silly piece of mail. Into the house it goes again, then back out to the van the next day. Rinse and repeat several times.
This is the very situation that resulted in the invention of the word “aaarrrgh” and a very good word it is too. When aaarrrgh fails to emerge from the vocal chords, other fine words take its place.
The end of this archaic way of transferring funds can’t come soon enough for this absent-minded cheque writer.
(Update 2023: This was written 11 years ago. Lots of ways to transfer funds have come about since then, now digitally, from e-commerce to auto bank cards. One frontier I finally crossed this summer: holding my smartphone up to a reader to pay a bill in a store. Some people still prefer cheques and we keep some around but they are rarely used now. Unlike my kids, I have not yet graduated to depositing cheques I receive by photographing them with my phone and depositing them in the bank through the magic of, well, I don’t know. Just some sort of magic. Aaarrrgh!)
©2012 Jim Hagarty
