doodlemaier | My punishment

To start off with I'm tired and sick and ashamed from this weekend's overdose on sun, absinthe, and self-induced idiocy, at my desk doing my deposit when I come upon the donation that I had tried to forget since I opened the mail on Friday in the form of a check from Canada. . . I have to take it to the bank to deposit it and I walk (everything else is run through the scanner, *blip* but that's a whole 'nother pain in the ass.)

Because it would take me longer to walk around it than to stop in, I decide that maybe some congee would make me feel better, and so I place a carry-out order at Mui Kee. I inform the waiter that I'm making a quick run to the bank and I'll soon return to pick up my lunch. I get to BB&T and it's packed. I wait in line, and then I wait some more only to learn that they're no longer able to process international funds at the counter (International?!!?!! It's from fucking CANADA! They'll make statehood before the District of Columbia!) I would have to wait for the next customer service rep. of whom there are two, one is dealing with the oldest, slowest woman I've ever seen. . . ev@r who, of course, needs to access her safe deposit box, and the other's with a spanish-speaking couple who, I swear, must be sharing pictures from their world tour vacation. I'm patient. I wait. Another half hour of my life slips by. I wonder about my lunch, and I notice it's raining buckets. I walk the block and a half from my office to the bank to conserve resources and stretch my legs and because, believe it or not, it saves time - when I don't have to deal with Canada; and this is how Ma Nature repays me (bitch!)

Finally it's my turn. Marianela's pleasant, and attractive, and even left-handed which is mildly entertaining to watch her as she writes numbers all over what may, in another couple hours, be a receipt for the deposit I'm trying desperately to get into the bank . . . before I die of mal-nourishment and hangover. I'm a goner, I swear. But I'm patient and the rain falls and Marianela scrawls away. She must be on the phone with the Royal Bank of Canada, I imagine, vying for the best exchange rate, or some shit. She rightly expects later trouble from this transaction and so gets up to make photo-copies of the offending documents, both Yankee Doodle and Canukistani, now tattooed in her impeccable penmanship with the slight backward lean to the characters.

I draw my last breath, holding it, and settle deeper into the chair to await death just as Marianela reappears with my receipt asking if there's anything else I'd like to chew up an hour or two on, but I'm patient (and the rain falls) and I politely decline and thank her for parsing the whole "these dollar for those dollars", or bear claws, or whatever the hell passes as currency north of the border. I step past the "how tall was that bank robber" meter at the entrance (the only place in the world where I'm actually 6 feet tall) and out into the rain and hope that there's no statute of limitations on lunch at Mui Kee, and if not I hope they remember what I look like there. As if it were a greeting, the sky squeezes the black cloud above my head just a little bit harder as I make my way back across the parking lot, sans umbrella, and the block or so back to my office. It's Monday and Nature hates the white man.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful for people who donate money from the goodness of their heart, but from the second I saw the name on the check (or should I say cheque) - two K's, two N's, and two S's all run together and interspersed with other consonants to spell a name that I recognized instantly as Satan's pseudonym - that I was fucked no matter how long I waited, or how fast I jumped, to deposit that check. Next time, Canada, rememeber: It's the thought that counts.