We had been out for dinner. The pasta consumed, the wine glasses drained, we asked to settle up.
The server stepped away and returned with the bill and the debit machine.
“Thank you,” said the server.
“Thank you,” I said. “But I won’t be needing this.”
I pointed at the machine.
“No?” asked the server, clearly confused.
“I’m paying with cash,” I said.
“Oh,” said the server. “Really?”
The server didn’t say so, but she was beyond perplexed. I could clearly read her thought balloon. Cash, she was wondering? Who the heck carries cash anymore?
Who indeed.
I rarely do, and nor, I believe, do most folks. Cash is — how do I put this? — so yesterday. Who wants their wallet to be weighed down with coins and bills when a card will do the trick?
The husband’s wallet is pretty much perpetually empty — as far as money goes.
A month or so ago, there we were, about to head to a farmer’s market. I made an odd suggestion.
“We’d better go to the bank first and get some money,” I said, pointing out that the vendors selling lettuce and beets would not likely be armed with debit machines.
“Really?” said the husband. “No debit machines? That’s pretty weird.”
It certainly is.
No matter where we go — to the dry cleaner, the grocery store, the pharmacy — we’re handed a machine when it’s time to pay. Such is the assumption that that’s the way people part with their moola these days. A $5 bill? Heck, I can’t even recall whose picture’s on that one.
It wasn’t always thus. Back in the day, my mother traded in cash — and only cash. She would not have come into possession of this at a bank machine, because they would have yet to be invented. She would instead have dealt with a person called a teller, who might have asked my mother how her daughters were, or where she got such a stylish coat.
When it came to paying the telephone bill, she would not have gone online. Instead, she would have signed on a dotted line and walked her cheque to the mailbox.
A debit machine? My mother wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what to make of such a contraption, but then, she wouldn’t have had any need for it either. Mom had something I seldom do: enough money to make her feel rich.
