while he lay abed.
It is perfectly alright to walk up to the recess in the wall where the ATM sits in the Wells Fargo building on West 3rd Street and slide your card into the machine.
You’re wearing flip-flops, and that’s okay, too.
They’re mismatched and your toenails badly need cutting.
The screen welcomes you as a valued customer and invites you to select an operation — and you do: cash withdrawal. Again, all this is perfectly fine, there’s nothing wrong with any of this.
When you think about it, though, you know you’re not a “valued” customer. Your balance tells you you’re probably a “tolerated” customer only.
You punch in your PIN, get your bills and stick them in your back pocket. You retrieve your card and pocket that, too. You’re wearing no-nonsense charcoal grey holster work pants. You zip the back pocket closed.
And you know it’s all fine. What you’ve just done is cool. You performed a legitimate action, perhaps not a very ambitious one, not something to record in your journal, but still — a decent, albeit banal, action. Nothing to feel bad about, in any case.
And yet, you feel disturbed, even upset, because of what has taken place.
You wonder if you should aim for more.
Whether the time you spent on this transaction — 2 minutes, or so — might have been spent more productively. More meaningfully, perhaps.
Is this the way to leave a mark? To contribute? To make a statement?Shame is no part of your life and, probably, it shouldn’t be. But insecurity is that nagging feeling that puts ideas in your head. Ideas for the morning after.
And those ideas — they’re not perfectly alright. They’re anything but fine.
Anything but.
