Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

I’ll just come out and say it — I tried to deposit money into the wrong bank last week.

No, I wasn’t ill or drunk or any of the reasons you might think a relatively intelligent person would be to attempt this “piece de resistance.”

Stone cold sober.

I actually had it all planned out in my head. You see, the previous week on my lunch break I had to rush to the bank then go pay a bill. The bank I use is next to a bank I used to use and still have an active yet empty account with.

On my way to the bank on that trip, I took one exit past my destination and had to do a loop off the highway and vowed I would not do THAT again. Next time, I said to myself, I would take the earlier exit and go straight there.

Literally, it’s a straight shot. Get off the highway and onto the feeder road, take a left under the overpass, go straight ahead and there it is.

With that in mind I did what I said I told myself to do. But lo and behold there’s a 5-gallon bucket in the lane up ahead. I wait for cars to move along and drove past the bucket.

I’m almost there.

Did I mention I sometimes have a short attention span?

I started making a mental note to move the bucket out of the way of traffic as I looked forward, noting the blue roof on the bank up ahead, not even realizing that’s my old bank.

With thoughts of the bucket in the road and of depositing $100 in my bank for a bill while on lunch break I passed my bank and went to the bank located next door to it.

I pulled into the drive-thru and was happy to see deposit slips in the canister; hmm, there weren’t any last time, I thought.

Oh well.

I fill out the form, added the cash and sent it along. There I was sitting in my car, air conditioning blasting, when I heard something. The teller was trying to get my attention. I turn the AC down (it was full blast) as she’s saying my account number has too many digits.

OK, no biggie. I give her my account number and she’s a bit puzzled while I was a bit confident.

Then she suggests maybe I’m at the wrong bank and my thoughts came crashing down in my head and time stopped. My eyes dart around looking for the name of the bank as the lady is talking to me and I’m smiling like an idiot.

Then I see it — the name of my old bank that I haven’t used in years. I was at the wrong bank.

I apologized, she sent my cash back along with the deposit slip (I’m keeping it as a souvenir) and I pull forward destined for the correct bank — and drove right past it while looking at the bucket still in the road.

That wrong move sent me back up the road, to the highway and the wrong exit, again. I did the loop-de-loop and finally arrived at the correct bank and was able to take care of business.

As for the bucket, someone did stop and move it out of the way of traffic.

So now I have a nifty, scratched through, wrong bank, deposit slip of a souvenir to prove that, yes, I did actually try to deposit money in the wrong bank.

 

Mary Meaux is a news reporter at The Port Arthur News. She can be reached at mary.meaux@panews.com