Miss Mom: Colander Brain

I have always thought of my self as a fairly intelligent person. I can carry on conversations on a wide variety of topics. I can multi-task, I am creative in a couple different mediums. I possess a decent sense of humor and seem to be good with people. But every once in awhile my secret idiocy makes an appearance. That secret that tells others in glaring obviousness that “Yes, Sylvie is an moron.”

For me to display my complete lack of mental prowess, two factors are needed. The first is my memory which can have the holding power of the average colander, and the other is some numbers. I don’t even need to do anything hard with those numbers like basic addition, I just need to use numbers to complete a simple task.

Today that task was going to the grocery store.

I frequent a discount grocery in town, having learned long ago that my kids will eat food that isn’t a popular brand hawked daily on television. I often pick up staples there like cereal, milk, bread, etc. and then complete my grocery needs at one of the other stores in town. This store’s no-frills status helps keep prices low, but there are a few drawbacks. One is that you have to either purchase bags there or bring your own. We always keep a supply in the car so that is no biggie. The other is that they only take three methods of payment, EBT or food stamps, cash or debit card.

I don’t need an EBT card and I don’t usually carry large quantities of cash on me, so I generally use my debit card. My card has the option of either choosing debit or credit as a payment form. I usually use the credit option and just sign the authorization. It had been a while since I had used the debit option, an important tidbit of information, you’ll see why in a moment.

I loaded up my cart with groceries and got in line. That is when I remembered the payment restrictions. This is where my colander-like memory displayed its skill at completely confusing data. You see a few weeks ago our bank sent us new debit cards. About the same time, I made a change to my cell phone service and they gave me a new PIN code to access my voice mail. Now the last time I had been to this particular store was the time I discovered that my current debit card was no good and the new one I had received in the mail a couple of days prior needed to be activated. Never mind the supposed seven days I was given to activate it. That time had elapsed, and I had to leave a cart full of food to go home and activate the new card.

Now that you have all this background information, you can guess what happened next. Yes, Sylvie added one plus one and came up with 27. In other words, here am I trying to remember my new PIN number, tearing through my wallet to find the stupid thing, and once again having to go home to try to fix my banking problem. If I had only been able to use the credit option, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Fuming, I get home look all over my desk and my box of yet to be filed papers and reciepts trying to find bank PIN number information. I go to the bank website to see if I can access it there. No success on both counts. Finally in frustration I ask my daughter if it were possible to use her debit card and we’d just transfer the money to her account seeing we have the same bank. No problem there. Then I ask for her PIN number. When she gave it to me, I questioned it.

“You should have a five digit number, didn’t they give you that when they sent us new cards?” I asked her. “No mom.” She replied. “They never changed mine.”

According the my youngest, the look on my face was priceless as I figured out what had happened. I realized that my highly intelligent cerebellum had yet again failed to keep important information like what PIN number goes where, and what had changed and what hadn’t. I had made the mistake of thinking that a new bank card had a new PIN, simply because I remembered getting a new pin for my cell phone.

See? Numbers + my brain = utter confusion.

Sheepishly I went back to the store where my banking PIN number worked just fine. When I told my husband of my ordeal, he was quiet for just a moment and then said. “You sure like doing things the long way around.”

Yeah. I guess he’s right. At least I didn’t admit my faux pas to the grocery store clerk. It’s one thing to discover you are an idiot, its quite another to admit it with witnesses around.

Sylvie Galloway is a Spartanburg-based writer and blogger. You can read more of her work at Sylvie is a blogger.