Not By Design

By CALVIN TRILLIN

This began when I pulled out a new pack of checks (Nos. 5221 to 5260) and found a check-size notice informing me that I was going to be given the opportunity to test out some designs I might want the next time I reordered. The first five checks in this pack, it said, were of various styles but were also real checks, imprinted with my name and numbered in sequence with the rest of my checks. The first one had two kittens on it.

Like many of the other opportunities presented to me by my bank these days, this was not one I had longed for. To put it as politely as possible, I have no interest in kittens as a design element--or, for that matter, as kittens. From the 10 check styles pictured in miniature on yet another page--styles with names like Radiant Beginnings and Victorian Rose--it was easy to decide that I didn't want any of them. If a variety of check styles gives each of us a chance to display our personality, I would prefer to be displayed as the sort of person who doesn't use checks with designs on them.

"I can't send anybody these checks," I said to my wife. "Kittens! Angels!" Yes, my check No. 5222 had an angel on it. I know I'm on record as saying that the only exception I make to an absolutist belief in the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment is that people who show slides of their trip to Europe should be put in jail for a very long time. But I've been sorely tempted lately to make another exception for people who correspond on notepaper that has angels on it.

"So just don't use those checks," my wife said. "Tear them up. Go on to 5226."

As it happens, I've always taken great pride in keeping my checkbook reconciled with my bank statement. I must have once heard my father refer to someone who was so financially inept that he "couldn't keep his checkbook balanced," and I've endeavored not to fall beneath even that modest standard. But this requires working on the outer edges of my financial and mathematical competence, and it would take less than the destruction of a few checks to throw everything out of kilter.

Should I change banks? Should I start using money orders? Then I was inspired by a phrase--"faceless bureaucracy." I realized that I could get rid of 5221 through 5225 by using them to pay bills to institutions so large that even the presence of thoroughly revolting angels would go unnoticed. Check No. 5221 went to Con Edison for my electric bill. The angels wafted toward one of my many telephone companies.

No sooner had the checks been mailed than I began to have second thoughts. I could see a bartender whose wife worked at Con Edison glance at the name on my credit card and say, before the entire Friday-night crowd at the bar, "I wonder why you didn't bring your pussycats with you tonight."

So I want it all out in the open. Yes, I did send checks that were decorated with kittens and angels--maybe even a Victorian rose. But I hadn't ordered those checks. Those checks are not the real me. I am the sort of person who does not use checks with designs on them. Really.