One of the fondest memories from my youth was the day I became old enough to have a bank book of my own. I can still remember walking on a cloud from the Barbados Savings Bank in the Parliament Buildings, happier than if I had won $1 million with my new bank book and the recording of $2 in savings handwritten on the first page.
As the years passed and I entered the world of work, my bank book assumed a role where it recorded my life’s ups and down. Whereas when I was still in school with no responsibilities it showed how much money I had, more often than not it now showed how much I didn’t have.
In fact, quite often that amount was the minimum $5 I had to keep on it in order to keep the account open. Sometimes I would have no alternative but to draw off even that $5 and subsequently open another account when I could afford to bank a few dollars again.
Later on, as life became progressively better, my bank book became happier and happier, which would put me on cloud nine whenever I was able to make a deposit and see the numbers grow, especially when they grew a new zero.
But whatever goes up must come down and when my bank book was really enjoying itself and approaching its happiest moment in my life, I decided to build my home. And for the next three years the numbers were hammered off by carpenters, brushed out by painters, flushed away by plumbers, burnt off by electricians, blocked up by masons, covered by tilers, planted over by landscapers and whoever else did whatever else, until nothing was left.
Eventually, the home was finished and, in time, I felt my trusted old bank book friend starting to feel happy again, which also made me feel good whenever I peeped inside.
Then one day I took the book to the bank to have it updated and it died. The reason? They told me they had stopped using bank books. In its place, I was given something the size of a calling card with just my account number written on it.
Since then, my visits to the bank have been devoid of the pleasure. Every visit is made sadder by the fact that I have to pay a new or increased fee or charge for whatever I do or is done for me by one of the friendly managers or tellers.
I have even become paranoid about the guard opening the door for me, my not knowing if there is also a fee or charge for that; or for using the bank’s pen, sitting on a chair, asking for a piece of scrap paper, resting on the counter, waiting in line, asking a question, propping on a stanchion, signing my name or whatever.
My biggest headache, however, has come from trying to calculate how much money the bank must be saving from no longer printing my treasured bank book, and, at the same time, not compensating me with one red cent from that saving for the misery and withdrawal symptoms I am suffering from never again being able to have one in my possession after so many, many years.
PS My tears for Auntie Olga.
