No, not his own … the first one he remembers:
One of my earliest life-defining memories as a kid was being dragged against my will to the bank because Mom had a meeting.
I can remember sitting in a chair next to my mother while she had an excruciatingly dull conversation with a banker. I remember wondering what I had done to be forced to sit through this and if it were actually possible to die from boredom. And then everything changed. I will never forget the moment. The banker leaned forward and said, “Now Mrs. Mercer, do you have your husband’s permission to do this? Perhaps we should give him a call.”
From my point of view the day just got a whole lot better; for the man behind the desk the opposite was true. He had no idea what he had done. He had unleashed a hell storm that he had absolutely no chance of surviving. The poor, hapless man.
To say the oxygen was immediately sucked out of the room would be an exaggeration. To say that the blistering rant my mother delivered to the dumb creature made his ears bleed would not be. Needless to say very soon we were no longer in a cubicle but in a much nicer office upstairs, with a different banker who was doing everything he could to stop my mother from closing every account and going across the street. The dude who suggested Mom get her husband’s permission to open a chequing account was sent to “get the lad a fudge stick.”
Go Mom!
Everyone should rant. Ranting not only makes you feel better but occasionally, as my mother proved to me many times, you might get results—justice, satisfaction or a fudge stick.
