Welcome to the 20th Century, Mr. Maki

I realized something today. I am stuck clinging onto a relic of a bygone era. An object that should no longer have any place in my life. Yet I am dependent on it every single month.

The check.

Or cheque, if you're French or something. No matter what you call it, there is no place for it in this century. Shouldn't we all be using online bill payments and direct deposit by now? Yes, we should. Yet here I am, constrained to this damn thing. Wake up Chemlawn. The future is calling, Safetouch Security. Yeah, I'm talking to you, sneaky extortionist mortgage company who will only take online payments if I have a checking account through them. You guys are living in the past and it's time to catch up with the rest of the modern world.

What brings this realization on? It's the fact that I am about to run out of checks. I have never run out of checks in my life. Not once. Now, maybe this is a sign that I wasn't exactly stable in my younger days, but I either moved and had to get the address changed or ended up switching banks because my "free checking for two years!" was up, but I've never had to restock my checks. Yet here I am. I signed up for this account at my bank shortly after I bought my house. This was almost five years ago now. Not only is this the first place not owned by my parents that I spent more than a year living in, it's the first place I've lived in long enough to have to replace checks, for god's sake.

Of course, here comes my problem... I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to order new checks. I have some little form in my checkbook that says "It's time to reorder!"But it has no address, no phone number, no nothing! I figure I'm a pretty smart 21st-Century man, but I'm at a loss as to what I'm supposed to do with this thing. If I can't figure it out by the time I'm down to a half-dozen checks, I figure I'll just switch banks again. I'm nothing if not disloyal to my financial institutions.

But really, why am I still writing checks? And using stamps? I'm stuck trying to get rid of my damn 37 cent stamps, so I take every bill down to the mailroom at work and hand them two pennies to add that extra postage on there. I figure I'll be doing this for another century or so since bills are the only thing I mail ever and I still have roughly 500 stamps with too little postage left. I swear to you, I bought the big roll so I wouldn't have to worry about everyone at work giving me dirty looks when I waved a quarter, a dime and two pennies at them every 4 weeks and the government announces the price hike not a day later. I shit you not.

This is just more proof that society hates me and I will never get to drive a flying car, even though it's the 21st century. If we can't get rid of checks and stamps, I certainly don't see us progressing as a species. That is the Maki Theory of Evolution. Or the Intelligent Design for Human Progress if that sounds like it makes more sense despite being a batch of crap I completely made up. Your choice.

Either way, checks suck and must die. Thank you for your time.