Broke in Case of Emergency

“No way.”

“No way!”

“NO WAY!!!” I exclaim in disbelief.

I slam my finger into the button asking if I require any other transactions and retrieve my card. I power up the window and look at the receipt I am holding in my other hand: ACCOUNT BALANCE $0. So unless the bank has suddenly charged me a $5,000 service fee for putting my card in their ATM machine, I have been ripped off.

My mind whirls as I pull out of the parking lot. How could I go from having $5,000 to zero dollars in less than 24 hours when I haven’t even been out to spend money? As I ponder the possibilities, the answer comes to me just as shockingly as if I had put a key in an electrical outlet. There is only one person who could answer for the desolation of my bank account.

I had recently created a Contingency Response Action Plan after realizing I had nothing in place for such events as a catastrophic weather disaster, the zombie apocalypse, or a world-killing alien invasion. Some people laugh when they find out about my plan. Those are the people I will be laughing at when they are choking on the ash from the Yellowstone supervolcano, having their brains scooped out by the undead, or being probed by the little green people.

In one annex of my plan (Annex D, Section IV, Sequence 1), I designed a contingency action in the event that I was unable to get home and I had lost my wallet. I should go ahead and tell you my plan is detailed. Extremely detailed. My strategy was to place an extra ATM card in a place that I could get to it. My fear though was that the cards location might become compromised based on the event that was occurring.

The idea of how to overcome my problem came when I was watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on television one night. In the episode Carlton busted Will trying to give a house key to a bum in case he ever got locked out of the mansion. While things didn’t work out so well for Will, especially once Uncle Phil found out, it did give me an idea of how I could keep access to my ATM card and not have to worry about the location becoming compromised. Make the card mobile.

The crucial step I knew would involve finding a reputable member of the town’s indigenous home-challenged population. I planned to spend a good full month in the search, which I planned out akin to the level usually only seen in a reality television show. But, as luck would have it, the search took less than a day. After a lethal combination of two big gulps, lower than average seasonal morning temperatures, and cruising around with a bladder that has been a little “motion activated”, I pulled into a Gas and Grub station.

The Gas and Grub I found myself at, while not in the best of neighborhoods, seemed to be a hive of activity (as it turned out it was Salisbury steak Tuesday). After fighting my way through the store/restaurant I found myself in a bathroom that posed a urinal challenge not unlike that of the Gordian Knot. There was a line sixteen deep for two urinals. The issue was that my bladder was pegging out to a maximum waiting ability of about ten people.

Simple math would tell you that 16 people divided by two urinals would put me into a comfortable “holding” window. The problem came in the urinals design. The two urinals were located with less than a two inch border between them. Men’s restroom etiquette prevented the urinals from being used simultaneously.

Just as despair began to pull me into a headlock, into the restroom walked the man I would come to know as Annex D, Section IV, Sequence 1 or “Scotty” as he called himself.

“I gotta use the facilities boys and my bladder meter is pegging at a wait of ten people,” Scotty rasped out.

The tension rippled through the line as the prospect of a protocol breach was likely to be forced upon them.

Scotty continued on, “When you approach the urinal each man should angle themselves to exactly a 22 degree orientation on the right and 338 degrees on the left. In that configuration you will be able to make the appropriate double use and me and this guy in front of me (that would be me) can get the kidneys tapped before our eyes float away.”

At that moment, well actually the moment I was done tapping, my mind ran through my checklist.

Indigenous and home-challenged? Yes, by all appearances.

Reputable? Yes, and throw in tactical genius on top of that.

Was Scotty the man to help me enact a portion of my Contingency Response Action Plan? I was never so sure about anything else in my life. After discussing the idea over two steaming plates of Salisbury steak (Scotty ate both), Scotty thought the plan was good, but supposed it wasn’t fully thought out.

“What if you can’t get home, you have been separated from your wallet, but you have taken a bump to the head and can’t remember your PIN number?” Scotty proposed.

“Hmmm,” I hadn’t factored that possibility, “What would be your suggestion?”

“Well.” Scotty said as he stretched back and scratched his belly, “As I see it the best option would be for you to write the PIN number on the back of the card you give me.”

Tactical genius. Told you.

That was yesterday, and now something had gone surprisingly wrong. Anger begins to seethe through my arteries. I will find Scotty.

He is the only one who can help me figure this out.