ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 5, 1997 TAG: 9702050051
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
Here is the aged, semi-hysterical, semi-retired reporter trying to understand life and why we are here.
This latest attempt to do this started when I went innocently to the mailbox and found a letter addressed to "Dear Ben. S. Beagle Jr." from this bank that wants me to open a checking account. If I send in a $500 deposit. What's all this about "Dear Ben S. Beagle Jr."? They don't know me.
I already have a checking account - which I opened 42 years ago with my bi-weekly paycheck, which was considerably less than $500.
Sane people everywhere know that I don't need another checking account that I can't balance.
Once, my figures showed that I had $25.39 less in the account than the bank said I had. I waited for months to be arrested for hanging paper. I still get nervous when the doorbell rings.
Every time I get the canceled checks in the mail, I sweat a lot. The last time I tried to balance my checkbook, I was off only $115.32 - in my favor. The bank can make those kinds of mistakes as long as it wants.
One time, in the summer of 1983, I was within $2.32 of what the bank said we had, but I think I was hallucinating because of this drug I was taking after my knee operation.
Anyway, after I opened the $500 account, this bank was going to send me some free software that I could use to do my income tax. It's called Turbo Tax, if you care about things like that.
The letter said that "Quicken users can even import their financial data into Turbo Tax."
That may or may not be the best thing since butter beans, depending on how you approach computers. Incidentally, if you don't know what Quicken is, go to the nearest police station, without passing GO, and turn yourself in as a person so far behind the times you are a danger to yourself and the general public.
The main point I wanted to make is that I wish we still lived in a time when banks gave you a toaster for opening a new account. Sure. Sometimes the toaster threw the bread across the kitchen and hit the cat or your mother-in-law. But you understood a toaster.
There'd be girls with sashes and great legs promoting the new accounts.
Listen. My computer is so old, it might download itself to death if I tried to put Turbo Tax in it.
The sound you'll hear is Old Bennie - who still appreciates a good leg - sharpening his pencils before doing his income tax.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB