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.

Articles Found and Lost

It has been said, "Wear the world like a loose garment." Good advice, especially when it's hot and sticky. It's often wise to avoid chafing, with clothes or demeanor. I sometimes chafe, as word that sounds like "chase" with a lisp. Whoever came up with the loose-garment theory may have been thinking of saris or Hawaiian shirts or dashikis. This will sound strange, but I carry a piece of fabric in my right pants pocket. not a security blanket, no. It has to do with my glasses. They said don't use tissues to clean them. I believed them. The glasses makers provided me with a black silkish microfiber cloth, 6.5 inches by 6.5 inches, I just measured it, centimeters not listed on the ruler, with "DKNY Donna Karan New York" imprinted in silverish. But sometimes I lose it. So as back-up I cut up some old white T-shirts into pieces (smaller than the DKNY official issue). Mind you, I'm lucky if I clean my glasses twice a week. But they cost me a considerable expense so I must be terrified of scratching the lenses. I even bought a little bottle of spray cleaner for the glasses. I rarely use it. Well, I lost the black DKNY cloth, feeling like Leopold Bloom without Molly's panties in his pocket. I looked in all my pants. Again. And again. No success. I pretty much surrendered, gave up. Then this morning, panty cloth shows up in the right pocket of my green pants, one of the collection of pants I had checked repeatedly while they were hanging in the closet. The thought that maybe I really hadn't checked as thoroughly as I had presumed nearly sent me into manic and neurotic and compulsive searching for that recently lost money. Almost.

After all, it's just an article of would-be clothing.

Letting go is hard.

Letting go of people, places, or things. Articles. Article. It's a pleasant-sounding word, as if it were the smaller second cousin of art. In grammar, we have definite articles (the) and indefinite articles (a, an) (as well as partitive and zero articles).

Let me amend that earlier declaration: Letting go of people, places, things, and animals is hard.

My beloved Rosie, our faithful Golden Retriever, is becoming a zero article.

We learned today she has liver and spleen cancer.

Today, after a slow but pleasing walk (yesterday, she spooked a deer in the brush, in the city! and the deer pranced away across a field), I lay down with her, on the grass besides the women's softball game in Burnet Park. An overly warm May sunset. She was panting. I hypnotically caressed her; she moved her paw if I stopped, urging me to continue. I tearfully and softly told her I loved her and kissed her on her snout, the bridge of her thinning frame, her brown deep eyes sad and vacant. And trusting.

Those same eyes replied to me, "I know," and when the game abruptly ended we got up and walked home.

Articles? Rosie's the real article.

And this precious garment I surrender not readily.