Feb. 16, 2006 – Originally published by CNC, Inc. – Dateline: Home Goods

Modern Life Really Is Kind Of Great

It is amazing just how dependent we have all as a society become on the ATM card. Remember the good old days of check-writing, where you could practice your signature, remember the date, and spend obscene amounts of money under the comforting cloak of “takes a few days to clear”? Back then, you could both buy a sofa and scramble to get a part-time job to pay for it, and the check would still be in “processing.” Those days are gone – gone with the days of cars that ran on diesel, the Jane Fonda work-out tapes, and a wonderfully cable-less society. Now, its all about instant access – and, instant gratification. And in some cases, instant embarrassification.

The thing about the ATM card is that the merchant knows almost immediately if you do, in fact, have no money with which to obtain your critically important items – if you’re at HomeGoods, this would be a grecian urn for the porch, if you’re in Home Depot it would be a glossy magazine on kitchen design for $22.95 that you’ll never use because you don’t have the money to re-do your kitchen – and you don’t have the money to re-do your kitchen because you’re always buying things like this kitchen design book. (Note: see, there really is a circle of life, like Simba said there was.)

So, you bring your items to the check-out counter, where the clerk is mad at you – not because you have actually done anything wrong, but because you exist – and, you have an ATM card. And I always seem to get in the lane where they have been having massive “portal problems” and are in a state of defeat like you have never seen before.

It goes something like this: you stagger to the check-out with your grecian urn, which is in fact made of light plaster and weighs about 10 ounces, but is so big that it’s awkward to carry. You’re always in front of and behind two people who are purchasing something that makes them look thrifty, and makes you seem like someone who is drunk on spending – while you have lost a whole toddler in your urn, they are standing quietly with one coffee mug, or a tiny set of hand-painted thumbtacks. So, you heave your urn onto the counter, and begin the process of looking for your ATM card. I start this process when I am about three people out – I never really know where it is, and a lot of times it’s at home in our “keys basket” where we keep everything but keys – hence the name. So, I fish through my purse, and come up with the following items: 3 crumpled grocery store receipts (how come they can put all my banking on one plastic card, while the grocery store is still issuing receipts the length of a football field?), 30 pennies, 4 stubs from raffles I won’t win, single mints covered with what we will term “purse funk”, a magnifying glass (?), and my wallet. Empty, of course – I think of my wallet as a very fancy home for my social security card.

So, I feel around in the bottom of my purse, and at last find my card hiding in a corner, asleep. “Tah-dah!” I say triumphantly, looking around for validation, which I ain’t gonna get from Thumb-Tacky or Coffee Mug; they just smile politely and stare at the impulse-buy rack (I make a quick mental note to ignore this rack, unless something catches my eye). So, Coffee Mug tucks her purchase in her purse and wanders out, gently touching items she has restrained herself from buying, while I mop my brow from the exertion of handling the urn. The clerk scans the item, and I swipe my card (for some absurd reason I am proud of how fast I can enter my numbers.) Then, as the seconds tick away, doubt creeps in. Was the paycheck automatically deposited? How much did I end up spending at Petco? Were doggie bones in the shape of a heart really necessary?

“Uh oh,” the clerk says, and I hunker down further behind the urn and mumble, “Oh, was there a problem?” Thumb-Tacky shifts her weight and murmers something that sounds vaguely appalling, and the seconds keep on ticking. “Oh, re-swipe your card please.” Whew! That was a close one! It was her machine’s fault! Cool.

As I walk through the parking lot, happily swinging my urn (that must look funny from the highway), I drop my ATM card back into my purse for a well-deserved rest. And unlike the days of checkbooks, I don’t even have to record my purchase, unless I have an old envelope or something handy. Modern life really is kind of great sometimes!