Worst of all, No Toaster

I was probably eight or nine years old when my brother gave me part of his paper route. It wasn't out of the kindness of his heart, he just didn't want to get up and deliver that one paper at six in the morning. This resulted in my having for the first time in my life, money of my own that I had earned. It didn't take long for my dad to notice that I was awash in cash. In probably what was the best thing my dad ever did for me, he took me down to the Tinley Park Savings and Loan, and had me open a Christmas account. There at the S&L they allowed this little boy to open an account with one dollar. Over the course of a year I would take all that cash I was earning by delivering that paper, plus my five cents allowance, and deposit it. By December I had a whopping twelve dollars in the bank. I don't remember exactly what I bought everyone for Christmas that year, except for my mom. She got a lovely bottle of Prell Shampoo. It was a pretty green, and I figured every mother could do with some clean hair.

Think of it, a bank that allowed you to open an interest bearing account for one dollar. Mark and I had an account at a local bank here that we used solely for travel. We would put all found money, such as tax refunds, coins that we had saved up, and what ever I could hide from Mark, into that account. Back about a month ago we took a little weekend trip to Boston, so I used that account to pay for the plane tickets, the hotel, and our carrying around money. Imagine my surprise when I opened up my statement the other day to find that the bank had taken five of my dollars and called it theirs. They called it a fee for allowing the balance to drop below two hundred dollars, I called it theft of my money. I don't get it, the bank has my hundred and eighty eight dollars that they are using to loan to people, and make money off of that, yet they couldn't help themselves. They couldn't just use my money, they had to take it. So I marched right over there today and closed that account, all the while bitching as loud as I could about the bank stealing my five dollars. It was really very unsatisfying. Not only didn't the bank give a damn that I was closing the account, all the other customers looked at me like I was one of those crazy homeless people that wander around talking to themselves.