Detritus

Detritus Detritus. (iPhone photo by BobbaLew.)

—Yr Fthfl Srvnt, despite working for a bank eons ago……
….which made me suspicious of banks — namely if anything can go wrong it will……
….decided to stop monitoring all bank activity.
I’ve used the same bank for some time. Banks come and go, and over the years we had quite a few.
Most recent has been over ten years.
They’ve yet to make a mistake. It’s always me. I still keep track of my checking account, in case I forget to enter something.
Well, maybe they made one mistake. But it was only ten bucks. I dickered quite a bit, but gave up.
It was probably my mistake, and my time was worth more than ten bucks for three hours of hair-pulling.
So I just adjusted my account $10.
Years ago bank branches operated independently, and as the branch’s chief-clerk (chief-jerk) I had to balance that branch every afternoon.
My goal was to balance “first-strike.”
If it was off a few cents, “1782!” 1782 was our Canadian-exchange account where we “shoved” the error.
Back then a few dollars were worth researching, but pennies weren’t.
Usually it was a keyboard error, often a “transposition” = divisible by nine.
There is so much slop I need not pay much attention. I get Social-Security, a pension, and savings income. My living expenses are usually less than my monthly income.
I got a new car (cash), and also a new roof for my house (also cash). But I also lost quite a bit after my basement flooded. Insurance didn’t cover everything.
What I’m short of is time. It’s gotten so is it worth my trying to recover $1,000?
There also is my communication problem: the fact I long ago had a stroke makes my communicatin’ messy.
1,000 bucks I’d probably chase, except I think I lost $1,000 when my basement flooded.
To go after that $1,000 I’d hafta make numerous phone calls, with hours of arguing.
Which I no longer can do.
I remember the grandstanding I did when the bank lost my paycheck and charged our account. “I got a receipt — honor it, or I’m blowin’ you in!”
I don’t know that I could do that since my stroke.
For a while I had Quicken® computer software, with which I reconciled my credit-card account.
I gave that up such that all I was doing was verifying charge-slips to my credit-card statement.
Often I don’t get a charge-slip, or I forget. If a charge seems valid I check it off despite no charge-slip.
A lot of what’s visible in the picture are charge-slips not filed yet. Verifying my credit-card statement seemed enough.
If Weggers charges someone else’s groceries to my account in error, I might pursue it if I have time, i.e. it doesn’t balloon into a four-hour wrastling match with 89 bazilyun phone-calls.
Weggers would probably just eat the loss. What’s $70 compared to losing a regular customer?
Many of my bills have gone paperless, and I use my bank’s online bill-pay for nearly everything.
All my banking is online; I never visit my bank except for safe-deposit. Even deposits are electronical: all monthly income is electronical, and checks I deposit via my iPhone.
My checking-account is in this computer. I update it once or twice per week. Online bill-pays I set up on my iPhone.
It’s gotten so it makes no sense blowing so much time monitoring bank activity.
I could harass ‘em to the Moon, but no mistakes yet.
I suppose I exist in my aquacise-instructor’s “bubble.” Everything seems pleasantly hunky-dory.
But it’s partly self constructed. Sweetness-and-light continue because my wife and I never spent anything: $10, $70, $900; I can afford it; although I’d probably chase that $900.

• Use of the term “detritus” may be incorrect, since it refers to organic waste.
• The very first job I had after college was for a bank.
• “Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester where I often buy groceries. They have a store in Canandaigua.
• Two years ago, riding Amtrak back from my niece in Fort Lauderdale, I texted that aquacise-instructor about how where we lived in Canandaigua was a “bubble” compared to Fort Lauderdale. She responded she liked the “bubble.”