My 89-year-old father, Frank, made a bank teller cry today.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t complain. He wasn’t a “Karen,” or whatever the male version of that is.
He did it in the passenger seat of my squeaky, 15-year-old Toyota minivan. And it happened right after he brought a crowded, impatient bank to a dead halt on a Friday afternoon.
Don’t worry. They were good tears.
It started, as most of my stories about Dad do, with a simple errand. It was just after 3 PM at the local credit union. The line snaked back to the doors. You know the scene: a dozen people checking their phones, tapping their feet, sighing loudly, all radiating that “I have better things to do” energy.
I was one of them. Dad, however, was not.
Dad’s a Korean War veteran. He’s a man who has sat in a foxhole, so a bank line doesn’t register as a “hardship.” He just… watches. He observes the world with a quiet, patient intensity, as if he’s still on guard, waiting for something important to happen.
When we finally shuffled to the counter, the young woman behind the glass looked like she was at the end of the worst shift of her life. Her name tag read “JASMINE.” Her eyes were puffy, and her smile was stapled on, stretched thin as a rubber band.
“Afternoon, Jasmine,” Dad said, reading her tag. His voice is a little gravelly now, but it still carries. “Tough crowd today.”
She just nodded, her eyes not really focusing. “How can I help you, sir?”
“I need to withdraw $100,” he said, sliding his old passbook—yes, he still uses one—under the glass. “And I have a strange request, if you don’t mind. Can I have it all in $5 bills?”
Jasmine blinked. I groaned internally. That was twenty bills. This is typical Dad. This is why everything takes forever.
“Sir?” she asked, thrown.
“Twenty $5 bills, please,” he confirmed, politely.
I could feel the collective psychic scream of the thirty people behind us. Jasmine sighed, her forced smile faltering, and turned to her drawer. She counted them out, her hands moving fast, and pushed the stack toward him.
“Thank you, dear,” he said. And then, he did the unthinkable.
He started counting them.
One… by one… right there at the counter.
“Dad,” I hissed, leaning in. “What are you doing? It’s fine. They have machines that count. Let’s go.”
“Hush,” he said, not looking up. “Five… ten… fifteen…”
The man behind me in the Carhartt jacket let out an audible, “Oh, come on.”
Dad got to the end. One hundred dollars. He paused. Then he slid two of the $5 bills back across the counter.
Jasmine looked confused. “Sir, it’s all there. It’s $100.”
“I know,” Dad said, his voice soft. He pushed the two bills closer to her. “This one,” he tapped the first $5, “is for you. And this one,” he tapped the second, “is for that gentleman at the back desk who looks like he’s managing this whole circus.”
“Sir, I… I can’t accept this,” she stammered.
“Nonsense,” Dad said. “Go next door to ‘The Sweet Bean’ after your shift. Get the biggest, gooiest cinnamon roll they have. Get two. You look like you’ve earned it.”
That’s when her dam broke. Her eyes welled up, and a single tear cut a path through her foundation. She put her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
The manager, a stressed-looking man in a wrinkled suit, had already started walking over, his face a mask of ‘customer-service’ anxiety. “Is there a problem here, Mr. Hayes?”
“No problem at all, son,” Frank said, his voice suddenly loud enough for the whole bank to hear. “I was just telling Jasmine here what a fine, professional job she’s doing. You’ve got a great team. They’re handling a tough room with grace.”
The manager froze. The man in the Carhartt jacket behind me went silent. Jasmine quickly wiped her eyes, and for the first time, her smile was real. It lit up her whole face.
In the car, I finally let out the breath I was holding. “Dad, that was… you’re something else. You held up the entire bank just to give a $10 tip.”
He just stared out the window as I pulled into the heavy Friday traffic. He was quiet for a long time.
“It was selfish,” he finally mumbled.
I laughed, baffled. “Selfish? You just made that girl’s day. You made that manager’s day. How is that selfish?”
His hand, wrinkled and spotted with age, gripped the door handle.
“I watch the news,” he said, his voice suddenly rough with an emotion I rarely hear. “I sit in my chair, and I watch the TV, and it’s just… noise. Everyone’s yelling. Everyone’s angry. They’re yelling about Washington. They’re telling us that the world is ending and that we should all be afraid of each other.”
He turned to look at me, his blue eyes, still sharp as tacks, finding mine.
“They’re trying to make me hate my neighbor because he votes different. They’re trying to make me afraid of the kid who delivers my paper. I’m 89 years old. I’ve seen the world tear itself apart and I’ve seen it put itself back together.”
He tapped his cane on the floor mat. “It makes me feel… broken. Helpless. I’m just an old man. I can’t fix the big things. I can’t stop a war. I can’t solve hunger. I can’t make people stop shouting at each other on the internet.”
“So, I do the small things,” he said. “I buy a cinnamon roll for a tired teller. It’s selfish, really.”
“Dad, that’s not what selfish means.”
“Yes, it is,” he insisted, his voice firm. “It’s just my way of trying to make the world feel a little better for a minute… because it makes me feel a little better. It makes me feel like I’m not as helpless as the men on the TV say I am. I’m just buying a little piece of the world I want to live in.”
We got home, and as I was helping him with his groceries, I pulled out the extra-large Stouffer’s lasagna I’d brought him.
“This looks good,” he said, taking the heavy box. And he immediately turned and started walking toward his front door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To the Martinezs’,” he said, nodding to the house next door. “Rick’s been working two jobs ever since the warehouse cut his hours. Maria’s trying to juggle those three kids. I know they’re tired of macaroni and cheese.”
“Dad, that’s not selfish. That’s just kind,” I said, exasperated.
He stopped on his porch and looked back at me. “He brought my trash cans in from the curb last night in that downpour. I’m just paying him back. It’s a fair trade. Besides, it makes me feel good.”
My father is always marveling at how generous people are to him.
He’s amazed that Mrs. Patel at the farmer’s market always “finds” an extra box of tomatoes for him. (“This-a-one is ugly, Mr. Frank, you just take it.”) He doesn’t mention that he’d brought her a folding stool from his garage one day, insisting his “old bones” didn’t need it, but her “hard-working feet” did.
He’s so touched that the high school kid down the street, the one with the bass-thumping car, shoveled his walk last winter without being asked. He forgets he’d given the kid a $20 bill one afternoon, telling him he was “working hard” on his car and to “buy a real part” instead of whatever he was using.
He’s delighted when Jasmine, the teller, waves to him from her car, or when the Martinez kids leave a crayon drawing in his mailbox.
I tell him time and again, “Dad, you are simply reaping what you have spent a lifetime sowing.”
He just waves his hand, a little embarrassed. “It’s all selfish, honey. I just want the world to be a little better.”
If only we were all that “selfish.” If only we all decided to fix our own little broken piece of the world, in whatever small, “selfish” way we can.
The world would indeed be a whole hell of a lot better.
Part 2 — where two five-dollar bills ripple outward: a cinnamon roll returns, a doorbell rings again, and my father’s “selfishness” starts looking suspiciously like a plan.
