Swipe My Face!

My photograph is on my debit card.

Apparently, it makes it harder to steal my identity. I'm not convinced that this added layer of alleged security is worth the constant embarrassment of having to look at this grainy, unfortunate image of myself every time I pull the card out of my wallet.

There are people who enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror. I am not one of those people. I know people who weren't even awkward-looking in middle school. I still struggle with a chronic, potentially fatal case of the awks. I've considered placing the card in my wallet so that the back, with the signature line, faces me when I pull it out-- but I'm way too much of a creature of habit to do that. That would be almost as momentous a change for me as putting my keys in my right hip pocket as opposed to my left. I mean, come on. What is this-- Revolution?

They basically made me do it at the bank, when I made the mistake of complaining that my magnetic strip didn't always read when I was making debit purchases.

"Oh, we'll get you a new card-- and we're doing this cool thing with pictures of our customers on the cards now, for extra security. Can I take your picture, please? I need the practice-- I've only ever done one before you."

It shows. I wish I could blame the end result entirely on her ineptitude, but that wouldn't be fair. I think my parents each bear forty percent of the blame each-- we can lump the other fifteen percent on the dummy bank employee, and the remaining five on the tremendously out-dated, guinea pig-sized digital camera she was using to immortalize me in debittude.

Wait... that's a hundred percent, right? Eighty, plus-- nevermind.

I look scared. I always look scared when my picture is being taken for the purposes of photo I.D. badges, and I guess that this, in principle, is no different. It is some card-like-thing that you present to people to verify that you are who you claim to be. When I got hired for my job a an EMT lo those many fruitless years ago, I looked petrified, as if someone had just flashed me and, instead of a penis, there was a second set of teeth-- pointy ones. At the psych hospital, my I.D. badge is slightly less horrified, though it probably should have been moreso. Maybe I just didn't realize what I was getting into. After all, I had only spent a week there by the time the picture was taken, and I was doing orientation stuff, on the second floor, away from all the patients, in a room with one other employee and the attractive nurse educator. What was there to look scared of?

Ah, what indeed.

I've had my new debit card with my stupid picture on it for maybe two months. It hasn't changed anything. No vendor at the movie theatre or at the supermarket or the whatever place has scoped out the picture and checked it against my face to reassure him or her that I was not some black guy or Asian lady using my card. Nobody has even given the picture a second glance. The only person who knows it's there is me, and I'm not thrilled about it.

Actually, the short Chinese lady at the dry cleaner is, of course, the one exception to this rule. If there is anything in this world that she can do to make me feel awkward, anxious, and/or uncomfortable-- it will be more than her pleasure, it will be her done duty. I went there last week to pick up three of my wife's coats. As soon as I walked through the door, she started giggling. I looked down, instinctively, to see if my fly was down. It wasn't. I would love, by the way, to own a business, where I laughed in my customers' faces, for no apparent reason, and still demand that they give me significant quantities of money.

She went to the back of the store and brought out the coats.

"$51.23," she said. Now, of course, I didn't have that much cash on me. I never have cash on me. I am a pauper. If a mugger held me up at gunpoint, he would invariably look at the contents of my wallet and angrily shoot me in the face-- after laughing at the picture on my debit card, of course. Speaking of which, I reluctantly handed her my debit card. She took it, and stared at the picture, looking up at me, then looking back at the picture. She laughed again.

"So cute!" she exclaimed, sliding it through the processing machine.

"Yeah, I asked if they would put someone else's picture there, but they said, 'no.'" I joked. It was wasted on her. She looked at my name on the card and said,

"Jewishako?"

"What?"

"You-- Jewishako?"

At least, "Jewishako" is what I think she said. Even if it's not what she said, it's definitely what she was asking.

"Um, yes," I said, uncomfortably. It wasn't as uncomfortable as when a psych patient asks me if I'm Jewish, but the sensation inside me was similar.

"From Israel?" she pressed, handing me my receipt.

"Uh, no-- my father is from Israel."

"Oh! How funny!" she said, laughing.

Next time, I told myself, I will bring cash. Let her laugh at George Washington's fucking face.