Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 24, 1995                   TAG: 9505240030
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: EXTRA1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THOSE TRICK ENVELOPES WILL GET YOU EVERY TIME - ALMOST

No. Some department store chains still drench materials in their billing envelopes with perfumes that can make an honest check writer pass out. You need to have a canary nearby when you open some of these envelopes.

The credit departments of these stores aren't going to believe that you were late with your payment because the aroma of Forbidden Fumes rendered you unconscious just as you were writing the check.

You're going to get stuck with the interest, pal.

I don't want to be indiscreet, but it's distracting when these stores include full-color pictures of young women in their underwear.

This can cause even solid citzens such as yours truly here to send the hardware store the check that is made out to the power company, and you can get a bad reputation like that.

These stores know that men usually pay the bills and that pictures of these women will get their attention. Think of it. You see very few color pictures of young men in their Jockey shorts.

If you're dumb enough, these pictures might cause you to buy your wife a bustier. I've got enough sense not to do that.

I don't buy her perfume either. I don't want her passing out while she's making meatloaf.

We could also get into those return envelopes that have windows and how you always put the check over the addressee and how you have to steam the envelope open. But we won't.

Anyway, I want to tell you of a moment of triumph I had recently.

I was going through the mail - sorting out the credit card applications and the Ben-Beagle-You-May-Have-Won- Immortality letters and throwing them away.

There was this really tricky, non-perfumed envelope from an association I will not identify at this time, which asked for a donation of $15 to save certain pieces of Americana I also will not mention.

You were supposed to be able to fold the original envelope in such a way as to make it a return envelope. There were printed instructions.

I tore that sucker all to pieces in an honest effort to make it a return envelope.

That kind of thing makes you feel sad and inferior for a while. Until you realize being a klutz has saved you 15 bucks.