Drama at the bank

Yesterday afternoon started with such potential.
My boys have been diligently collecting (and spending) their chore nickels. (How much longer will I be able to pull the wool over their eyes, that 5 cents for picking up the play room is a fair wage?)

Anyway, in an effort to encourage saving, I took them to the bank to start savings accounts. (Although, really, what is the point? In a year, inflation will make whatever they've saved not worth the price of gas it will take to drive to the bank to withdraw it... If Bank of America still exists in a year).

Mistake #1: Going to the bank at 3:30 PM when it closes at 4:00.
Mistake #2: Forgetting the boys' social security numbers at home.
Mistake #3: Letting Mosey carry his nickel jar (against my inner voice telling me not to).

First, WHY do banks close at 4:00? Isn't that like totally anachronistic? Who gets off work at 4:00 these days except bank workers? Anyway, we get there at 3:30, and I tell the guy who greets us that we want to start savings accounts. He takes a look at my boys' nickel jars and I can tell he's totally thrilled to have our business. He asks me if I've got the boys' social security numbers. Oops, nope. It's too late to drive all the way back home to get their SS cards, so I call Ben to see if he's got them. He's in a meeting but says he'll call me back in a minute. 20 minutes later he calls back and has Joseph's and Brigham's but not Mosey's. Oh well, I've come all this way, I may as well get Joseph and Brigham going with their accounts.

We traipse across the lobby to the bank worker's office (I can tell she's also totally thrilled to be starting two new accounts each comprised of 20-something-dollars worth of nickels with 10 minutes left in her working day). Mosey insists on carrying his nickel jar, so I dig it out of my purse and he carries it in.

The office is teeny-tiny and the woman has to drag in another chair so we can all sit. Joseph and Brigham and Mosey are antsy and fidgety, having sat in the lobby already for almost 25 minutes with nothing to do but watch the stock market report on CNBC. I tell Brigham to SIT DOWN and be quiet. While I was hissing at Joseph and Brigham to be still, Mosey very carefully balanced his nickel jar on the arm of the chair he was sitting on. Brigham simply can't be still. He stands up on his chair and climbs over the back of it. I turn to yell at him again just in time to see him deftly knock Mosey's precariously balanced nickel jar off the arm of the chair where it shatters on the floor. Lovely.

Bank workers, hearing the crash, come running in, and soon I've got Mosey in a sobbing heap on my lap, a very nice lady picking tiny shards of glass out of the pile of nickels on the floor, a bank manager standing in the doorway anxiously telling my boys over and over to please stay seated (I'm sure they're thinking law suit, and how sad is that? That they have cause to be worried I would sue THEM over my own son getting cut by a glass jar that HE broke?), and the 20-something woman helping us open the accounts (with no kids of her own, I'm sure, and now very little chance she ever will have her own kids) sitting at her desk nervously eyeing my children and putting forms in front of me for me to sign.

I mumble something about there always being drama with three little boys, and sign on the dotted lines while trying to shush and comfort Mosey and hopelessly trying to hide my embarrassment.

We finally get out of there at 4:25, with Mosey's now glass-free nickels in a bank bag, and two freshly opened savings accounts.

And to think I get to do this all over again when I take Mosey back to open his account!

I should have just taken them all to the dollar store and let them go crazy blowing all their hard-earned cash. :-) Hey, at least it was memorable!?!