Sunday, my son celebrated his birthday. He wanted this fly-fishing device, and his girlfriend was going to purchase the item — from us and her.
In the casual Sunday phone conversation, I said I’d send the money electronically. She’d have the cash in her account by nightfall.
Just for the record: She’s in Colorado, and I am in Virginia.
By nightfall.
On Sunday.
Flashback a few years.
Remember peak phone rates — Sunday afternoon when long-distance calls were taboo? Remember how long it would take to get cash from one place to another? Even Congress moved faster than most American money.
If you remember these things, you will agree that online banking and cell phones challenge the saying that anything is better than sliced bread because, in all reality, there is not much in this galaxy that can top the advantages of online banking and the practicality of a cell phone.
Besides the fact that online banking has removed the horrid monthly — and usually failed — attempt to balance a checkbook, the cell phone really has removed long-distance communication barriers.
Back in the day, making the long-distance call to get a lousy $10 could take weeks.
Remember: you did not call unless you got the cheapest rates — early Saturday morning.
When I was in college in the dark ages, I’d call home collect on Saturday morning.
If mom was home, she would accept the charges, go to the bank on Monday, and transfer $10 from her account to mine — same bank. The following Friday, I might have $10.
Let’s not even consider that my mom would mail a check. Some 50 years later, I might still be waiting for the check to clear the bank.
But wait, the attempt to get a full $10 is more involved than an answered collect call. If mom was not home, my siblings would not accept the call understanding that their ultimate duty was to tell my mother I had called, which they usually promptly forgot. If she returned the call, the phone at college rang in the hall as most students didn’t have personal lines. Anyone on campus could walk by and answer the hall phone — which means I might or might not know mom ever returned the call.
In 2021 — call any time of the day or night, and money can be in your tight little fist by the end of the conversation.
Besides that, I can check my bank account to see the dollars flow out — and see that immediate negative balance that remains.
Ahhh…the hours saved trying to figure out the unexplained science of balancing the checkbook. Does anyone remember how tedious an act of patience and math balancing the monthly checking accounts was?
It’s a good thing someone came up with online banking because my husband’s patience with my dubious checking account entries nearly caused one of us to need that one phone call that does not come from a cell phone.
Toms Brook resident Lisa Currie is a retired professor of English as another language and an adviser at the Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown. She has worked at The Shenandoah Valley Herald and various other newspapers in Virginia.
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