The curmudgeon strikes again

How dare I pay with cash?

I felt like the hapless customer in the debit/charge? commercial where everything is going along at a great fast-food pace and then he pulls out cash. Cash? No one deals with cash.

Would that I had learned my lesson last July when I bothered to spend leftover traveler's checks. On our trip to Houston, I had varying degrees of luck and blogged about them here, determining that I was indeed an old curmudgeon if I expected the debit card generation to recognize them as legal tender.

Some of us don't learn our lessons--or at least not quickly--but I thought I was safe with a fifty dollar bill.

Having made a DVD purchase at Best Buy, I pulled a fifty from my wallet and handed it over. The sweet young thing at the register had seen them before because she reached for the magic test-it-to-be-counterfeit pen and marked it. It passed the test. The test it didn't pass was the one with the little strip running through it. She held it to the light, she crinkled it, she sighed and looked at me.

Could I help it if it wasn't this year's model? It was an old fifty, one I'd received from cashing a check at the bank earlier in the week. And then, in a crowded store, two days before Christmas, things ground to a halt at my register.

She called the girl at the next desk. She explained the situation. I tapped my foot and waited for the manager to appear. Surely someone had seen a fifty which was older than themselves. That didn't become necessary because the second clerk, whether she had actually seen one or not, declared it to be good. Fine, my clerk answered, if it was fake, it wasn't her fault.

Things quietly resumed and, glare or no, I gathered my packages, smiled, and wished for a little more world-wisdom in the retail world.