Men of a certain age – you’ll see why I refer only to men in a moment – may well understand the sense of embarrassment I felt this morning. Remember that time when we went to purchase an adult magazine from the top shelf, rushed as quickly as possible to the till to pay for it, sweated as the transaction seemed to take forever, wondered how the shop assistant would be judging you and then hoping and praying no one you knew would walk into the shop as you hid it within your coat? Obviously, this never happened to me, oh no, but I can still feel the embarrassment – someone else’s embarrassment, naturally – quite vividly. Today’s embarrassment involved withdrawing cash from a cash machine.
My local barber prefers to operate on a cash basis because otherwise he gets ripped off by the banks for using a cashless system. I like him very much and I am quite sure he disposes of his cash in a legitimate tax-paying way, so every so often when I am in need of a trim I have to withdraw cash.
Only elderly folk of my vintage, and older, actually pay for things with real money and I am not normally one of them. Although I had some initial reservations, I quickly adapted to the cash free world, transitioning rapidly from card to portable telephone. These days I seem to use my phone for everything except telephone calls and as I live in permanent fear of having it nicked I keep it close to my person at all times. So it was with some trepidation that I went to the cashpoint next to our local Tesco shop.
I have a justified reputation for overthinking and I didn’t disappoint myself here, either. I found myself looking round, not so much to anticipate robbers who might try to overpower me and steal my phone and money but hoping that no one I knew would see me drawing out cash. I am not unduly concerned about growing old – it certainly beats the alternative – but I can imagine people saying, “Look at that silly old sod drawing out money! Doesn’t he realise there is a much easier way of paying for things.” In know: I say it, usually to myself, all the time. If I see someone drawing out a fortune to do the weekly shop, it just feels mad to me. Now I was that silly old sod.
To be fair, it was marginally less embarrassing than the time when I was in our local pharmacy, collecting a product for a minor issue with my nether reasons called Anusol and then finding myself standing next to a woman I knew a little bit. Mercifully, the pharmacist didn’t offer advice on how to employ the product but I still wished I could have been anywhere else. And to this day, I still think about my Anusol, so to speak, whenever I see her and part of me wonders if one day she will say, “Remember that day when…” (insert your own punchline).
Today’s cash point moment will live with me for a while, until perhaps no one has come up to me and said, “Was that you withdrawing cash by Tesco the other day,” followed by, “Do you still use cash? Really?”
So to my mind, using a cash machine is in the same embarrassing category as purchasing an anus soothing product and a girlie magazine, possibly even worse. Due a financial miscalculation, I still have a tenner in my wallet so potential embarrassment awaits. I will keep it until a metaphorical rainy day comes along and then hope no one notices, perhaps getting all the humiliation out of the way at once by buying a girlie magazine and some Anusol. Or just not spend it at all.
