When I was a little girl, I watched my father pay bills at the kitchen counter. I picked up the check he had written to Florida Power and noticed on the memo line at the bottom of the check he had written, "Excessive Rate".

"Daddy! How could you do that?"

"What?" he said. "The check is still legal. And it IS an excessive rate."

That was the kind of sense of humor of my influence.

Ever since... I 've been writing "Excessive Rate" on all my checks that piss my off. Last week, I was at the tax collector's office and they didn't accept debit cards. I had to write a check for almost a hundred bucks to get a replacement copy of a car title... literally, they printed me a copy off their printer... one piece of paper... a photocopy of the title which I couldn't find among my shop of horrors pile 'o paperwork at home. I didn't complain. I simply wrote the check and, as is usual, wrote "Excessive Rate" in the memo line. I handed the clerk the check.

The clerk noticed the memo and laughed so hard she had tears streaming down her chubby cheeks. She said that it absolutely made her day.

So make someone's day! I think everyone reading this should do the same... write "excessive rate" on your checks and get the message across.

That's all for now.