A few years ago Grandma asked me to accompany her to the bank. It was supposed to be a quick trip because she just needed to get some cash from the ATM to hold her over until she got her new checks in the mail.

But it wasn’t quick.

To begin with, we had difficulty finding a place to park. There were about 12 parking spaces and about 20 cars trying to get in and out. 12 spaces + 20 cars = not enough spaces. Grandma decided she’d do a fancy little half-turn-around/half-back-up/something that I totally thought wasn’t going to work. And it totally didn’t work. But I admire Grandma for her efforts because that was some very interesting maneuvering. At one point I wanted to melt down in my seat and not be seen by all the other drivers but I thought that would be breaking the Never Leave Your Grandmother When She’s in the Midst of Difficulty code of honor.

Once we made it inside the bank, we had to wait for a man in a blue shirt and baseball hat to finish using the ATM. He was rather interesting to watch because he was talking to the machine while he was using it. What is it that you say to ATM machines? “Come on, you can do it! Just give me a couple more $100’s!”




As we waited we pondered the sign hanging on the wall behind us. It showed a group of smiling Spanish people and proclaimed loudly, in Spanish…who knows what it said? We don’t know what it said because we don’t speak, read, or understand Spanish. (I do have my own version of Spanish which involves adding an O at the end of every word, but it’s not widelyo spokeno.) For all we know it could have been telling us not to stare at guys in baseball hats who talk to the ATM.

Finally, 20 after arriving at the bank, it was our turn. But now we faced a new problem: the machine would accept her credit card but not her top-secret pin. This might happen to other people but those people can say, “Well, maybe I just don’t have the number right.” We had the number right. We knew it was right because Grandma produced, on a little piece of paper from the bank that she always carries with her, her top-secret numbers.

Because we like to be high-security with our top-secret numbers.

We never were able to get the money, even after repeated tries. We discussed asking the bank tellers for help which would have been slightly mortifying to do in front of the same people we met out in the parking lot, but Grandma decided she didn’t really need the money since she had enough bread and gas and didn’t plan on doing any unexpected shopping (does one ever plan on unexpected shopping?), so we left.

I’m sure Grandma was so glad she asked me to go with her because, in her words, I “know how to run those kinds of machines”.

I guess I just don’t do well with top-secret numbers.

Or with crowded parking lots.