Just Thinking...

Feeling a little braindead tonight and also like giving myself a bit of a break. Hey, if I don't do it, who will? So I'm going to assign myself that little creative writing exercise I give students all the time, to write about a childhood memory; I've done this before. Sometimes, you end up with unexpectedly good material. Other times, you do not. I love that I am getting braver about just plunging in, not worrying as much as I used to about it being right the first time out. I didn't expect this to happen. Not to be overly dramatic, but it feels really important.

So, I was thinking about how when I was a kid there were no ATM machines and when you needed money you had to go to the bank. As you can probably imagine (or remember, depending on how old you are), this meant that quite a lot of time was actually spent en route to, driving away from, or in the bank itself. Seriously, when is the last time you were inside a bank? The modern revelation at one time when I was pretty little still was the drive-through window at the bank, which meant that--hold onto your hats--you didn't actually have to get out of your car! Not that this drive-through window was open at night, or at any other time other than 9 to 5 on weekdays, but still. I thought it was pretty exciting from my vantage point in the back-seat. What I really liked about the drive-through window at the bank we went to, the one at the end of the Star Market Plaza that featured a Brigham's ice cream parlor (raspberry sherbet, lime rickeys), was that when the metal drawer opened and my mother took out her little envelope full of bills, it held two lollipops: one for me and one for Alison. Needless to say they were never the same color, and we always wanted the same color, and we always fought about it, and they were only those little flat circle lollipops like they have at doctors' offices. But still.

And one other story about the bank. Apparently once when we were very small, maybe 2 and 3 or 3 and 4, my mother and my grandfather took us to the bank, a different bank, the one you had to go inside. My mother parked the car in a shady corner of the lot and left us with my grandfather while she went in to do whatever transaction she had to do, possibly cashing a check? In the seventies that could really take up a chunk of your day as I recall. While she was in the bank, probably waiting in line--I remember there was always a line--Alison and I took off all our clothes in the backseat for no reason at all except that clearly we felt like it. When my grandfather realized what we'd done he became vaguely hysterical, did not know what to do with us. I actually don't know what happened when my mother got back to the car. I assume she made us get dressed again. But the point is--or a point is, anyway--that it used to be a pretty big hassle to have to go to the bank.

Okay. Bubkas. But I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried.