Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh

The other morning, I was preparing to go to my sewing class. As usual time got away from me and I was running late – again. Even with the best intentions on a Saturday morning, I always manage to run that few minutes late.
As I was about to leave, I realised that I didn’t have enough money in my purse and needed to detour to the ATM.

Arriving down town, I spied a parking spot and claimed it for myself. Unfortunately the car in front of me must have claimed it a second earlier. This left one other spot that required me to do a reverse parallel park. There are some things I know I can’t do and reverse parking is one of them. In the spot before me was a beautiful, shiny Harley. Occupying the space behind  was a farm ute. I figured if I was going to mess up (heaven forbid), it had better be with the ute.
It took me quite a bit of maneuvering under the extremely watchful eye of a heavily tattooed, bearded, leather-clad bikie standing with his arms crossed across his chest to finally park my car. There was no way on earth I was going to even go close to his bike if I could help it!
Looking at my watch, I now realised that I was late so I grabbed my purse and dashed up to the ATM. Opening my purse, a gust of wind blew every receipt (that I had been promising myself for ages to dispose of) into the alley between the bank and a cafe. Racing to pick up those small pieces of paper, I swooped upon each one in succession. I had one piece of paper left to retrieve (a blue sticky note with the name of some great wines on it). As I bent to claim it, the wind blew it from my grasp. Racing forward a couple of metres, I bent down and put my hand out once more. The wind had other ideas and blew it off once more. This scenario was repeated twice more before I finally caught the blasted thing and stuffed back into my purse.
Walking back to the ATM, I put my card in but it wouldn’t take it. Checking to make sure the card was okay, I tried once more.
Once more, it refused to accept my card.
It was then I read the screen and realised that the ATM was out of order.
Racing back to my car (still under the watchful eye of a vigilant Harley owner), I gingerly pulled out into the traffic and drove up around the corner to another bank ATM.
Putting my card in, a message popped up on screen “$3 transaction fee. Press OK to continue”.
I just burst out laughing.
What else could I do?