Read Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) for Free Online

place in LA, for when I wasn’t traveling. I opened a bank account in LA, with an ATM card to boot. In truth I knew nothing about banking. I just put in money. I never wrote down how much, where, when. I just deposited whatever I had and knew, since this was a bank, that everything would be taken care of. I trusted them, the bankers.
    My method of money management was this: whenever I needed to write out some checks for monthly bills, I’d skateboard down to the Wells Fargo on Van Nuys Boulevard and pop in my ATM card. Balance? The machine always asked me. Yes, I’d punch in and it would respond with a figure: $782.92. Excellent. Thank you. I took the piece of paper back home and went to work. I went through my bills, in order of importance: rent, car payment, gas, electricity, Visa. All totaled $700. Lucky for me I had $82.92 to play with.
    And with the stamped invoices in my chubby round hand, I skated down to the mailbox, dropped them in, and then quick cashed myself forty big ones. On the way home I would stop at the 7-11 for a six of beer and some pretzels.
    A few days later, the bounced check notices would start arriving in the mail. Oh God, I’d think, not again. I made an appointment one afternoon with the bank manager. He wore a suit; I wanted to discuss with them the problem of their shoddy record keeping. I had facts and figures and a loose-leaf sheet with the balance receipt stapled to the top left-hand corner. This guy was toast.
    I walked into the bank. There was a velvet rope with a tasseled edge. There were tellers behind panes of glass. The man I’d come to speak with was seated behind a big boat of a desk, and I could see his shiny shoes. He listened. I explained.
    “Monthly, you know. It happens all the time. I get the balance, and that day write out checks, and you say I don’t have it? Impossible. I have the receipt.”
    The man, listening to this, was stunned. He didn’t move. He didn’t laugh. He just stared at me. After a moment he asked how old I was. Twenty two, I told him, and I had two Visa cards and I was a professional stand-up comic; I had been on
Star Search
; in clubs; I was not someone who could have their bank messing up like this, month after month.
    The man asked me to go over it again, my system, how I knew the mistake was not mine, the date on my balance receipt. I went slowly because he was having trouble understanding, which seriously concerned me, seeing as he was a bank employee. When I was done he lifted up my blank checkbook, with absolutely no notation of deposits or withdrawals, and flipped through it. The dry pages rustled. He took the loose-leaf paper with the ragged receipt stapled to it and walked into the belly of the bank.
    “Heads are going to roll,” I thought. “Someone is in deep trouble.” After ten minutes, he came back out. “Okay Rosie,” he said. “Listen, I’m giving you free unlimited checking, including a no bounce fee. You will no longer be charged anything concerning your checking account, as long as you agree to come to one training course on handling you account.”
    “Fair deal,” I thought. I’d get to hold forth in the course about my superior banking methods, and in return, I’d get a no bounce fee.
    So many people in my life have been nice to me. I see it clearly now.
    The course was on a Sunday, at twelve noon. Everyone there was a Spanish speaker, except me. The teacher asked each of us how we recorded our transactions. Immediately I raised my hand and said, “I just go to the ATM and see my balance, and then write checks for less than that amount.”
    The teacher started to laugh, really laugh, and then so did the students, who felt the funniness without understanding a word. I had cracked everyone up, and I wasn’t even trying.
    “That’s a good one,” the teacher said. “You should be a comedienne.”
    Well, I was becoming a comedienne, and the truth is, my act was getting better and better even if my banking skills were