quote unquote exciting

I strolled into my bank. "My" is undeserving of this application of a personal pronoun. The article "the" is apt in this context that is being built one verbal brick at a time. When this institution was a credit union, when I joined it in 1990, "my" would be literally and figuratively correct. But that was then. (I don't have to tell you we live in radically different times. Even if you hear someone lament the externals of these times, you can't commonsensically conclude whose side they are on: the uncivil, invidious xenophobes or the unmoored, vexed communitarians [moi].) 

Back to my bank stroll. 

I glide through the lobby, a boulevardier without portfolio, a citizen of the commonwealth (as if our wealth were common!). Absent any forethought, I ease into one of the cozy faux-leather chairs arranged away from the tellers, a distance from the glassed, venetian-blinded offices of "associates." The armed chairs (meaning they had armrests not weaponry) were in a tight circle around a nonexistent bonfire, adjacent to a Keurig with coffee pods, creamer, sugar, stirrers, all of this free stuff intended to enhance the customer experience, to welcome bank customers and prospects, or bank customers' or prospects' friends or relatives awaiting the financial-task-performer's task completion. Granted, the chairs might potentially host a waiting retinue attending to latter-day Bonnies and Clydes or Jesse Jameses, their thumbs gliding on "devices" in order to share strategic get-away info. (But why would they be so foolish or risky? Today's thieves silently hack, 24/7, invisible even to the rest of the household above the Mountain Dew-empties-littered room in the basement illuminated only by a nest of computer screens.) Do not so breezily dismiss this heist theory: at the entrance, the bank warns entrants against wearing hats or sunglasses for this very reason. Really? How retro!

As I said, I plop down on the tawny-cream vinyl waiting-room-decor chair. I figure I'd complete a text or two before entering the line (no waiting line evident, actually) to "do my business." Being old, I am an agonizingly slow texter, using my (not "the") index finger, not my thumbs, which anyone under 40 does, which is agonizing for millennials et al. to observe. Drives them nuts.

No hurry.

A flaneur not in France. 

An associate pops out of her office, her face barely disguising worry and urgency.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asks in the international language of officialese.

Insouciantly (to continue the français theme), I reply, "No, I'm fine."

If I could've, comfortably attired in my paisley smoking jacket, sans chapeau, I'd've lit a cigar, tossed the wooden match, and asked her for an espresso.

I continue my dilatory digital dalliance on my device.

Within minutes, another associate pops out of her office, next-door to the office of the aforementioned associate.

"May I help you, sir?"

Your poseur-narrator, a former English teacher and retired editor, appreciates her understanding of the distinction between "can" and "may."

However, for this gadabout, the word "sir" in her query is jarring, off-putting. Why? Three, maybe many more, times this associate and I have interacted professionally at the (not "my") bank. She has answered my queries, helped me perform the proper paperwork, seen my signature affixed, and secured a financial instrument or two for me.

Sir?

You don't remember my name, or if not my name my visage, or if not my name or face my signature if I show it to you?

Without hard evidence and with a dollop of imagination, I conclude the two bank associates see me as a threat, an indolent idler casing the joint. A would-be John Dillinger or "Pretty Boy" Floyd in-waiting. (Pawlie Kokonuts does have a certain criminal panache, don't you agree?) 

Some welcome, Keurig and all.

This institution boasts the slogan "America's Most Exciting Bank," a curious tagline given that a tsunami is at least as exciting as a wedding; given that a once-in-a-lifetime stock market plunge is at least as exciting as a World Cup victory.

Despite my insouciance, was I too exciting with regard to Financial Institution Security Heistiness (FISH)?

May I help you, sir?

"No, I'm fine. Thank you," I replied avec un sourire anglais.