A Meeting of Saver and investor
Silas was choking with anger. He had been unable to cash a cheque which The Director of their firm had duly signed and issued to him: a cheque, which if it had received prompt attention from any of The Two Paying Cashiers in The Bank’s Booths, would have meant a pleasant weekend of refreshment and entertainment in any of the decent restaurants in their neighborhood. Yes, his monthly salary which invariably dwindled to some One Hundred Naira before another reached his hands.
Now, he might not leave The Canopy Bank Plc with it, because she would be closing very early, although she had opened rather late.
Enviable Bank legacy! God bless the Major Stake-Holders in the Nigeria’s World of Commercial Transactions.
Silas watched with ill-will another fracas in the long queue of impatient customers scrambling to receive attention from either of the two cashiers in their booths. The Canopy Bank Plc would announce that she had run out of cash or released another unsettling bombshell of hers. No wonder the sounds one usually heard from customers on her premises were resentful hisses, baleful sighs, throaty grunts, harsh growls, menacing snarls, plaintive whines or a Jewish murmur.
Simmering down, Silas tried to recall when, indeed, he had walked into any bank and caught a smiling customer before or after received attention from any member of her staff.
“Can there have been a moment like that?” he quizzed himself but midway gave up the idea of trying to remember such a scene, laughing rather contemptuously at his silly half conviction that there might have been such a moment.
“No, one would neither hear in Banks any sound that resembled an open giggle or brief chuckle. And yet the general opinion is that no rational human being would omit transacting with them via opening an account with one, running it and all that…
That Friday, Silas left with an offended air. He was finally unable to go home with his hard-earned money. It was on the Monday of the following week that he met with success in this respect. Thus, he refused to open an account with the bank as he had promised Andrew, a co-worker of his, who was desirous to see him do so. Andrew’s earnest wish was for Silas to experience like him the joy of knowing what to do with one’s excess reserve. Andrew had claimed during their discussion that the excitement that went with discovering that previously banked money had appreciated in sum was akin to the one businessmen felt when they had ploughed some money into a venture and it brought them mouth-watering profit!
“That’s beautiful!” Silas had exclaimed.
“So, when next you receive your salary…” Andrew continued “…Turn to The Receptionist in The Customer Service; she will politely tell you what to do, the different accounts you may wish to operate and the interests you may expect to pay at the end of the month.”
Seeing Silas in the late hours of Monday he tried to find out whether he eventually did what they had agreed to.
“Sure. Sure!” Silas lied. “In fact, The Receptionist after confirming the exact amount I wanted to deposit initially gave me triplicate forms to fill bearing columns for The Surname, Names, Marital Status, Occupation, Parents, Next of Kin, The Type of Accounts I wanted to operate and passport photograph; which I later endorsed at the bank.
It was so masterful and smooth a fabrication that Andrew would have been the last to suspect that Silas have not opened anything. The Experienced Liar tried to dispel his last shred of doubt that he had, indeed, opened an account by describing the scenes that later unfolded at the venue: the receptionist’s collection of his filled forms and submission to the sections they would pass through for official documentation, his receipt of a tally while waiting at the lounge for his turn, the arrival of his Savings and Withdrawal Passbooks and final use of the former to deposit the sum specified by The Bank for her New Account Holders.
They were sad lies told against self with their potential future great disservice to The Teller. Silas, through his own making, was not partaking in the joy Andrew had wished he would in the Area of Savings nor did he realize at all that he had elected to court a self-deprivation.
Not until one dramatic evening while, he was washing a long, neglected, long sleeve shirt of his did he catch the chance of appreciating the merits of generally putting things by for future use. Midway, he had felt a bulge in its left pocket and, on opening it, saw substantial left-over sum of money he had planned to spend at a restaurant but did not.
Any reason now why he should his tongue hold or let it cleave to the roof of his mouth rather than powerfully shouting it or even yelling it that “One a penny gains by a penny saving!”?
Silas immediate practical demonstration of his earnest belief in Saving An Understanding Penny was to turn in the direction of his Andrew Co-Worker, admit to his having lied to him earlier that he had indeed opened a Savings Account with Canopy, how he had later chanced upon a thought-to-have- been-lost sum of money and the beautiful electric currents he had felt with its reacquisition…
“It’s all about the long upheld but still disdained wisdom in Saving a Little from The Big!!
Silas elation at his personal confirmation of this crept into his legs and got him coasting towards Andrew’s room in the annexes of a millionaire’s mansion.
“From here it’s a half kilometer my two legs can deal with,” Silas remarked after the said two legs had begun to do exactly…
But only the last two hundred meters to Andrew’s residence, Silas sighted an eatery visibly baiting passers-by with things to eat and drink between Fried Rice with Scrambled Eggs and Spanish Wine. One customer was actually facing and dealing with a plateful of the former and a glassful of the latter while conversing with another customer eating what he would not have ordered for being not his preferred nutritive package: the Loved-by-Kids Noodles with the As-Much-Loved-by-kids Canned Orange Juice. Of course, price-wise, the noodle stuff with canned orange wouldn’t be nearly a Thousand Naira while Fried Rice and Scrambled Eggs with Spanish Wine or Italian invariably collected A Thousand and nearly another from their partakers. To the eatery Silas veered, sat down and from a steward-brought menu placed an order for them. He Silas could afford to spend the now found N1,500.00 on the same Fried Rice with Spanish Wine…
But Silas sitting down for the meal also turned out to be Silas meeting an argument between the other two customers in the eatery on “Which is The Better between A Saver and An Investor?”
“Honestly, I have a right to discontinue this conversation, “The Fried Rice Chooser vulgarly flung at his Noodles Co-Conversationalist.
“Then, you’re getting upset with either me or with our arguments,” opined The Noodle Guy.
“Not, in fact, either of the two,” the man first politely answered and then impolitely disclosed that when he was Savings-Minded, he never in hotels and restaurants went beyond Noodles Fast Food with Canned Orange Juice or Pineapple’s, so that he would not have to cry days on end.
A thunderbolt!
In the end, back drew Silas intending to meet with Andrew; with the mind of A Future Investor not Saver.
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