Credit or debit?

Each morning I wake up at seven o'clock. My alarm is set for six-forty, because I know that it will take about twenty minutes for me to hear it. I am ready by seven-ten, and left with nothing to do. I am not a good judge of time. I am always early for things, generally so early that I look stupid.

On mornings when I can't find something to eat in the house, I swing by Burger King or someplace else en route to work. At Burger King there is an older woman named Pat who works the drive-through window. She dreads seeing my Bronco grumble up to the window, because I generally realize that I have no money. I hand her my credit card instead. She sighs audibly the same way each time. "Credit or debit?" she asks. I always answer, "Credit," for two reasons:

• First, my bank likes to charge me a million dollars each time I use my card as an ATM card and not as a credit card -- I'm not sure I understand why, but that's how they are.

• Second, I don't know my pin number. I really don't. The bank gave me some gobbledy-gook number instead of the simple one I asked for, and now I'm a man without a pin number.

So Pat swipes my card and grumbles as she hands the plastic clipboard to me, never pinning the receipt or the pen to the clipboard but resting both precariously on the flat surface while she wobbles it out to me through the window. People like to honk at this moment. I don't mind. There's nothing they can do, really, as long as they stay in their cars. If they got out, I think I would drive away and keep the clipboard if it came to that.

But I always wonder why the card thing is such a big deal for the harried Pat. I'm paying, aren't I? They do have the capability for credit card transactions. It would be different if I showed up there every few days brandishing my card as if they'd never told me before that they don't accept credit cards.