Too Hot to Handle

In this nation, we have a highly evolved system of financial management and monetary regulation. The banking world exists to let everyone, from Poor Richard to Richie Rich have an alternative to stuffing their life savings under the mattress. Now it does not matter, for the most part, which bank you choose to do business with. In fact, I’m pretty sure most people just use the bank with the most convenient ATM (you know, for some fast cash for a late night T-Bell run). Maybe some people like to say “Wachovia.” I know I do.

Regardless of your financial institution of choice, banks have been created for two things. And it is these two things that we, as American citizens should be able to rely on. First, banks are responsible for your money. Their job is to hold it, not lose it, and hopefully incrementally add to it on your behalf. Secondly, if it weren’t for banks, how can the world expect me to know the day’s time and temperature?

As I was driving to work today, I joined most of the commuting world and tuned in to some 24-hour newsradio. Granted, it wasn’t the format I prefer, but there was a bus crash on I-95 this morning and I wanted details. In my brief stint on the AM dial, I found out the Washington DC area is going to be stifling hot for the next few days, as the heat index will easily climb to the 110 mark by tomorrow. Wonderful. It’s a good thing I’m not attempting to move this week.

(Please stand by. My keyboard just exploded in a sarcastic fireball.)

But just because I heard the prophecy of heat does not mean that I have any idea what it is like immediately outside my vehicle. And since WTOP doesn’t broadcast such detailed weather facts, I realize that I’m just going to have to rely on that bank on Leesburg Pike to fulfill its second of two duties and tell me how hot it is right now. The has not fully risen of the new PriceWaterhouse HQ building yet, so I’m at least hoping for a balmy 81 or 82. I sit at the traffic light waiting for their big digital board with the red letters to switch from the current time (7:08) to the temperature.

(blink)

333.

Now I know that while carrying everything to my car this morning, I was breaking a minor sweat across my brow, but I had no idea it was THIS hot. 333 degrees – and I’m just praying that’s only Fahrenheit. Either over the weekend I developed some sort of genetic immunity to heat so hot it could boil ketchup, or a nuclear heat wave rushed into the DC metro area in the twelve minutes since I closed my car door at Random Run, just four miles away.

Both seem unlikely.

But can anyone come up with another reason for the bank on the corner to be telling me that the temperature currently is 121 degrees above the boiling point? I know what you are thinking, the thermometer must be broken. Well, I am here to defend against such a crackpot theory. If the thermometer doesn’t work, and thusly making the banks of America unable to perform one of their two primary duties. And what happens to their credibility then? If that temperature is a product of malfunctioning systems and miscalculation, what ELSE is malfunctioning and miscalculated? Financial statements, account balances, even the number of lollipops in the teller’s jar – none of this data can be trusted. We’re talking major treasury meltdown here. So if you’re going to come here and tell me the thermometer’s busted, I’m withdrawing all my money and putting it under my mattress.

With that said, who wants to help me move my bed this weekend?