Remember that commercial where everyone was in line at a convenience store? It was a long line and it was moving pretty good because everyone was paying with his bank card … then a guy stepped up and paid with cash and that fucked everything up.

That scenario is untrue. And, well, pay-for-everything-with-my-debit/credit-card guy is a dumbass.

Ya, but his card has a chip and it’s super-secure and he has an electronic record of every transaction and it’s unsafe to carry cash … Bullshit!

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I like to go to 7-Eleven and the AM/PM the same way chicks like to go to Nordstrom. I don’t even have to buy anything, I just want to hang out with the chips and Slurpees and the 1000-kinds of nuts and crackers and Slim Jims and Mentos and candy bars and chewy things and hard things that can crack a tooth.

I went to one of these types of establishments every day for over twenty years. I bought a newspaper and a soda and usually at least one item with too much salt or sugar.

The person in front of me holds a single roll-pack of SweeTarts. When it’s his turn, he drops the candy on the counter and starts to search his pockets. I don’t want to say he was a Millennial because that would be too easy, but he was much younger than me.

Finally, pockets essentially empty, he pulls out his tri-fold wallet – seemingly made of denim – and pulls out his debit card. He makes an electronic purchase for a total of seventy-five cents.

It’s not because he’s smart or savvy or hip to technology that he uses his debit card nonstop it’s because, despite his adult appearance, he’s walking around without a single American dollar in his pocket … and that’s an embarrassment to society and his ancestors.

I work with guys like this. In nearly any situation that might, in the normal course of living, require being in possession of legal currency, every one of these guys, without fail, says the same thing, “Oh damn man, I don’t have any cash on me.” They rely on computerized society to do everything for them and they don’t want the mental anguish that may come along with having to calculate the outcome of using a five dollar bill to make a seventy-five cent purchase … No wait, how much change am I supposed to get?

You can’t do the job of adult fuckin’ life without at least a couple of bucks in your pocket. What if the power goes out and now the bar only takes cash? What if you bump your head and forget your debit PIN? What if you park your stupid Nissan Leaf in valet parking and now need a three-buck tip? What happens if you need to bribe someone?

The admission fee to adult life needs to be paid in cash.

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I watch people at the ATM. Not in the obvious, I’m memorizing your PIN criminal way, but I watch them just the same. Yesterday a guy in his sixties was in front of me. He walked slow, seemed nervous, timid, twitching a bit. His hair was thinning and he had a big scar on the back of his head shaped like the letter “C”.

Maybe he got cracked over the head at some point while standing in line at the ATM? Or maybe he was a mobster in his younger days and now bears the scars and emotional trauma that follow a life of crime? Maybe he’s depositing a stack of counterfeit $100s or depositing a seven-figure check he embezzled from a guy back in the neighborhood named Carmine?

I watch him. He’s got a checkbook and wallet and papers and folded envelopes. He shuffles back and forth like maybe he can’t control his bladder. Most ATMs have a little review-mirror mounted on the machine. Customers are supposed to use the mirror to monitor their surroundings so that if danger approaches they can quickly wheel around and karate chop the bandit. I’ve now positioned myself so that I can use the mirror to see exactly what the old incontinent mobster is doing.

The machine spits out his card and the ATM makes that metal, vault-opening sound it makes before it pushes out cash. I figured the decrepit crook would have rigged the machine to dispense thousands of dollars but instead, it issued a single twenty-dollar bill. He withdrew twenty fuckin’ dollars!

Who does that? It costs twenty-one dollars to drive to the ATM! Well, at least the nervous old bastard has a little cash. My instincts tell me he’ll spend it on a beer and a shot or maybe a Penthouse magazine and a pack of smokes. But who knows, maybe he’s gonna put the twenty in his grandson’s birthday card (broken down gangsters are sentimental that way).

Of course, for the younger crowd, having cash to put in a birthday card or in the Sunday church offering is really not an option.

What’s a sadder statement about America: that our retired mobsters are destitute and can only make monthly bank withdrawals totaling twenty dollars or less, or that an entire generation is not in possession of a single cent and has never actually made a cash purchase of anything?

Photo credit: Aranami on Visualhunt.com/ CC BY