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Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Rant #2,944: Back Home Again




Yes, I am back where I belong …
 
That pre-cancerous lesion that I told you about is supposedly history after yesterday’s skin doctor visit.
 
But on the other hand, I know that my vacation is really over right now.
 
I went to the bank yesterday to deposit some money into two accounts, and it was my encounter with the drive-thru teller that reminded me that I am back home, and back home to total and complete frustration.
 
As I pulled up to the drive-thru after taking my son to work, I noticed that the lane was empty, so I figured it would be a quick 1-2-3 to get my money deposited.
 
I put the money in the drive-thru’s drawer, and told the teller this:
 
“Two hundred in savings and $100 in checking.”
 
Very easy to understand, or so I thought.
 
The teller did her thing, and drawer came back out to me, and I noticed one slip of paper coming out to me, not two--one for each account--as I had expected.
 
I checked the receipt, and she had put the full $300 in my checking.
 
“No, I wanted $200 in my savings and $100 in my checking.”
 
The teller said she was sorry, she did not hear me, and she said that she would simply switch and extra money from one account to the other.
 
I had to sign another receipt to let her do this, and she proceeded to switch the money.
 
Two receipts came back to me, she again said she was sorry for the mix-up, and I drove a few feet past the window so that the car behind me could move up to the window.
 
I then discovered that the teller did transfer over the money, but she did the opposite of what I told her to do—she put $200 in my checking and $100 in my savings, so she simply took $100 that didn’t belong in the checking from the original $300 that she errantly put into that account and put it in the savings account, which is not what I wanted her to do.
 
If there wasn’t a car being taken of behind me, I would have walked back to once again get this fixed, but since someone else was being taken care of, I pretty much threw up my hands in disgust and drove away.
 
It really isn’t a big deal to not have what I wanted switched, because I don’t ordinarily use these accounts that much, but it made me realize, once again, that I was home.

And my pool ... fuggedaboudit! I discovered that the new motor we had put in is no longer working, the water is green as a Martian, and what's more, I am still waiting to hear back from the pool company I used to open up the pool this year.

What a waste of time and money this whole thing was this year!
 
Also bringing me down to earth were the recent passings that we have heard about of people who have had some type of impact on out lives.
 
I heard about most of these while away, but I really couldn’t dig down deep into any of them until I returned home.
 
Tony Dow … Bill Russell … Nichelle Nichols … Bob Rafelson … Pat Carroll … and now that I am firmly on my usual terra firma, Vin Scully.
 
My childhood is once again dented my these untimely deaths … as if any death is timely.
 
Tony Dow was everyone’s big brother on “Leave It To Beaver” … Bill Russell was not only a mammoth on the basketball court with the Boston Celtics, but he stood up for his principles and never allowed himself to be a victim … the same thing could be said about Nichols, but her victories were punctuated by her role on the small screen's “Star Trek” …Bob Rafelson was the director//producer and creative mind behind everything from “The Monkees” to “Five Easy Pieces” …Carroll was the ubiquitous comic actress who was on just about every sitcom there was in the 1960s and 1970s …
 
And now we have Scully, the voice of baseball, the last link to the Brooklyn Dodgers and a living legend if there ever was one until his passing.
 
We are all getting older, and our icons are aging with us, proving once again that for all their accomplishments, they are no different than we are.
 
We are all human beings, and nobody lives forever, although our love and admiration for them makes us wish that they would.
 
But their lives are etched in stone,, the stone of audio and video, and one just has to go on YouTube or onto one of the retro TV channels to see and experience them when they were at the height of their powers.
 
I turned on the TV yesterday, and while watching “Leave It To Beaver,” it finally hit me that the only member of the Cleaver family that was still with us was, as the announcer said on each show, was “ … [and] Jerry Mathers as ‘The Beaver.’”
 
With Dow now gone way too young from cancer, that line really hits the target now, and in the future, when I see these other icons at their best, it will hit me that they are also not with us anymore … but look at what they left behind!
 
Yes, I am back home again, for better or worse, and these things I talked about today really put a punctuation mark on the realization that my vacation is finally over.
 
Back to reality … .

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