I think I’ve said it before. I’m sure I’ve said it before. But sometimes — today springs to mind as a good example — the life I’ve chosen costs me too much of my sanity. I’ve decided to be filthy stinking embarrassingly rich. I hate being poor.

The bank has locked my account. This works out well because there’s been a number of things I need to buy, like groceries and insulin, and a number of debts I need to pay, and I just got paid last week and the bank has put a hold on the check because it’s a larger check than usual. Fabulous.

First, it turns out the phone number for my branch is top secret. It’s not, mysteriously, printed on any of my account statements. I looked in the phone book for branch phone numbers. I found every branch but mine. I called one and asked the person who answered the phone, for the phone number for my branch. She kept trying to tell me that I had got the wrong phone number. That this was so and so branch. It took quite a bit of explaining to make the woman understand I was looking for the phone number of my branch and that I had been quite aware of what branch I had called. After quite a bit of confusion, enough nearly to inspire a spontaneous aneurism, she gave me a number.

I called the number. “This phone number has been discontinued.” That was it. No other information than that. I called the second branch in the phone book. Voice mail. The third branch. Voice mail. The fourth branch. A person this time, but she also seemed very confused. At last she gave me a phone number for my branch. And, mother of god, it was the right phone number.

Then 35 minutes of being on hold in priority sequence. But that was more fun than talking to the bank people. You don’t have enough money in your account to cover it if the check is insufficient. Yes. I suppose that’s all very sensible. But I dislike very much the situation. And I dislike talking to bank people — lord knows I used to be one — especially when my bank account isn’t doing so well (well, since I opened it, I suppose). I can’t help feeling patronized and diminished.

I want to be rich. I want to call bank people with so much money in my bank account that they call me sir and mean it. That they don’t put me on hold for 35 minutes. I want banks to solicit me.

My favorite was when I was subcontracting for the bank and I went to the main branch to cash a check (from the same bank) and they said that they had to put a hold on it. I got very loud. “For goodness sake’s, why?” They said it was bank policy. I said, very loudly, the payee of this check is this bank. If you’re not sure if you have enough money to cover it, I think I should be quite concerned. A manager, after all, let me cash the check. But not before I had caused a few concerned looks among the other patrons. Yes, that was rather satisfying.

But it would be more satisfying still, because of the impossibly large balance in my account, to have bank people mean it when they call me sir. I hate the kind of life that makes me postpone buying groceries.

So yes, I don’t quite have all the details worked out but I am renewed in my plan to become gorgeously, deliciously, corpulently rich. I will let you know how that’s working out.

SS