Thing of the Day: Lessons Learned

Preface: Picture fairly unrelated to the rest of this post, but how AWESOME would that be?

Four years ago, when I opened my Suntrust bank account in Nashville (a quick shoutout to the employees at Suntrust West End who have forgiven me somewhere between 5 and 15 overdraft charges), I was asked to create a pin for my debit card. 18 year old me looked down at my classy tricked-out flip phone and rapidly selected a pin based on a four letter word I could easily remember by spelling the numbers out on my flip phone key pad. Feeling clever, I proceeded to not to make room in my brain to memorize the four digits in the years since.

Enter Blackberry. Ever since I got the glorious PDA that never leaves my side but unfortunately lacks an old school number/letter keypad, one would think that I would have made the effort to memorize the four numbers that gain me access to cold hard cash. The one who might think that, however, clearly knows nothing about me. Ever since I first started using phones I have only memorized six phone numbers (my house, my mom's office and cell, my grandparents, my best friend Rachel, and one boy when I was 15). Furthermore, the only way to enter our campus apartments is via 5 digit access code. It took me until mid-October to memorize my own access code without checking my Blackberry notes, and I know only 2 others despite day-to-day entry into my friends apartments and the fact that all the codes are made up of only the numbers 1-2-3-4-5. The point being--ever since my phone keyboard stopped providing me with the numbers that make up my pin code (thanks a lot, QWERTY), I have had to resort to desperate measures to withdraw.

Usually I don't have much of an issue. Store purchases always have letters conveniently placed on the number pad where you swipe your card, and most ATMs still use the numbers as well. While abroad in Europe, I had several unfortunate ATM encounters where foreign alphabets threw me off and I was forced to either Google "phone keypad" on my Blackberry and cause a frustrated-at-dumb-Americans line to build up behind me, or grab a strangers' cell phone to quickly identify the numbers I needed. So despite embarassment, I never felt the need to really take the leap and embed the four digits to memory.

Until yesterday. A loving family member made the gracious decision to surprise my campus mailbox with a check, so I giddily headed down to the Suntrust office on the first floor of my building to make a rapid deposit and begin online shopping at work. As I approach the teller, giddy with check in hand, she has the audacity to ask me for my pin for "security reasons." Uhhhhhhh. "Can I borrow your phone?" is greeted with a dirty look and a flash of a Blackberry Tour. As I attempt to explain, the tellers' eyebrows retreat further and further towards her hairline as she judges me in utter disdain. I am clearly deemed an identity theif as the teller asks me to hold on and calls an intimidating looking superior who then proceeds to lecture me for a full two minutes about selecting a pin I am "capable of remembering." I am then told that my check will be held for 24 hours for further security reasons. There's a Gilt sale going on now, woman, I don't have that kind of time. But alas. After recieving a pamphlet about managing my student checking account, I am given a brisk goodbye and sent off.

I think I've learned my lesson.

On to embarassing moments for others. Now that I am a 21 year old responsible legal adult, I can judge the stupid decisions of those younger than me. So it must be said--what is with kids these days?! The Cheat Sheet this morning had not one but two WTF worthy pieces of news. Firstly, an 11 year old girl in Bulgaria gave birth to a child last night. On her wedding day. Sick. The Daily News quotes her as saying "I'm not going to play with toys anymore, I have a new toy now." I am going to vomit--there are several things that are incredibly disturbing about this case aside from the fact that this girl is ELEVEN.

1)Okay, no, she is 11. When I was 11 I learned from the son of the family who was renting the mountain house next to ours what sex was by engaging in one too many dates between my Barbies and his Kens. I was shocked that my beloved Barbara would engage in such an act and all in all didn't understand the logistics of it , but that may have been because Mattel didn't feel the need to equip B or K with genitalia of any sort. Nonetheless, the idea of humans engaging in the bizzare act was unthinkable.

2)Of course she's Bulgarian. Come on, Eastern Europe--no one is ever going to take you seriously if you continue to allow shit like this to go down on your turf. Lay down the law. Sex education in middle schools, please.

3)The girl is also quoted as saying "I didn't know I was pregnant until my grandmother said I'd put on weight. I just thought I'd ate too many burgers." W-W-WTF. I once spent a full eight hours watching I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant with Momma B this summer and have never heard as ridiculous an excuse. How many burgers is this child eating? And where oh where are her parents?

4)The new baby's name is Violetta, as is my little sisters' (hi, V). Since I have never met or heard of any other person named Violetta, I am going to take this as some sort of sick and twisted sign. To either join an against-child-brides-advocacy-group or call V and demand to know exactly what kind of crap she is up to her freshman year of college.

Moving on to the Cheat Sheet's second ugh-story. Next week's Gossip Girl will apparently be featuring a threesome. As excited as I am to find out who the lucky characters will be (Serena-Nate-Trip Vanderbilt? Olivia-Dan-Vanessa? Lily-Rufus-hot rockstar from Rufus's olden days...ah, I can only guess), this is completely inappropriate behavior for basic cable television aimed at teenagers. Back in the days of my dramedy filled teen-hood, the raciest shit ever pulled on TV was when Marissa and Ryan had sex in a random tent for some reason set up in their high school. And it took them three seasons! Maybe if we didn't air threesomes for impressionable eleven year olds to watch, we wouldn't have burger-babies named Violetta! Ick, world! I have learned my debit-card-pin lesson. When oh when will you learn your stop-encouraging-stupid-teenagers-to-have-sex-and-then-be-shocked-about-teen-pregnancy-statistics lesson? Oy.

Until then, I'll be counting down the minutes till my workday ends and listening to the "Glee Soundtrack"station on Pandora (Thanks, Caybabe!) Other music played on the Glee station:90s Disney movie soundtracks, the Rent and Wicked soundtracks, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Miley Cyrus. It's going to be a great hour and a half.