When I received my very first debit card (completely unsolicited, I should note) ten or twelve years or however long ago, I was unimpressed. The way I saw it, I had no need for this new-fangled card thingie. I used cash for most of my transactions, and, in the immortal words of grumpy old men everywhere, that was how I liked it. Once a week, I happily went to my neighborhood bank branch in person — no doubt with an onion tied to my belt, as was the style of the time — to obtain that week’s allotment of greenbacks. There, I enjoyed talking to a pretty teller who actually recognized my face and acted happy to see me, a definite fringe benefit to my cash-only way of doing things. (Must’ve been the onion.)

The truth is, I actually resented the way the bank just mailed me the damn card without me asking for one first. The way I saw it, The Man was trying to force me to change my ways to better suit his needs, not mine. I was no fool; I knew that electronic transactions would save the bank money and time on processing, while conferring no particular benefit to myself. Would the bank share its cost-savings (and increased profit) with me, either in the form of dividends or lowered rates or something? Not bloody likely… worse, starting to use ATM machines to get my cash would obviate my need to go to the bank in person, which meant I would lose the brief time I spent chatting with that pretty teller. The debit card thus represented yet another loss of human interaction in favor of impersonal machines and cold bits and bytes of data, a trend I saw increasing all around me and which troubled me deeply. And, oh yeah, just as a cherry on top, there was also a paranoid libertarian voice in my head pointing out that, by giving in and using the debit card, some computer somewhere would record my purchases and, in theory at least, enable the all-powerful Man to track my physical movements.

Fast-forward a few years to just two days ago, when I received a new Visa credit card in the mail, a replacement for one that was about to expire. I dutifully called the 800 number and activated the new card as instructed, then got into my wallet and cut up the old one. No fuss, no muss.

The next morning — that would be yesterday — I stopped on my way to the train station to fuel up my car. I pulled out my wallet, slipped my debit card from its slot… and stopped with a baffled look on my face, because the card I was holding was mostly orange in color — owing to a photo of Southern Utah’s red-rock country on the front — instead of the familiar blue of my debit card. It was my new credit card, I realized, the one I’d activated the night before.

Odd, I thought, how did that get there? I quickly rumaged through my wallet, looking for the debit card and wondering why the credit card had found its way into the wrong slot. I couldn’t find my debit card. I did find the expired credit card that had been replaced by the orange one.

I’d cut up my debit card the previous night thinking it was the old credit card.

My Homer-esque “D’oh!” was probably heard by submarines off the coast of Oregon. Purely by chance, I had a couple bucks in my wallet, so I was able to buy enough gas to get me to the train and back, and the bank has promised to have a new card to me within a few days, but in the meantime I’m feeling decidedly twitchy to be without one. My original, Luddite-ish attitude toward the debit card concept long ago weathered away like soft sandstone, and I’ve now realized just how often I really do use the thing. I rarely carry cash, I can’t remember the last time I set foot inside my bank, I have no idea whatever became of my pretty teller, and I routinely grumble that vending machines aren’t set up to accept my card.

I mention this embarassing little incident only because I’m amazed by what a difference a few years can make…