Medallion, Medallion, Who's Got the Medallion?

My mom might have worn jeans with a hole in the knee, and washed Styrofoam takeout containers for re-use, and only used a select-a-size paper towel if she first tore it in half...but she did not leave this world a pauper. As part of her inheritance, Val received 169 U.S. Savings Bonds.

Let the record show that my sister the ex-mayor's wife received the same. Mom was not one to play favorites. Good thing, because it would have been hard for me to sleep with one eye open these past 2.5 years if I had received even one cent more than Sis.

We put those bonds in the safe, and every couple of months, Hick told me I should do something with them. Because, you see, they were in Mom's name and mine. POD. Thank goodness she had the wherewithal to take care of such a detail. Hick was concerned that if something happened to me, nobody (meaning him) would be able to cash in those bonds. Of course, I kind of looked on them as security that Hick wouldn't try to hasten my demise.

I hate dealing with stuff like this. It's SO complicated. Hick said we could just take them to the bank and cash them in. I didn't think so. It's 169 bonds. "Val. They're U.S. Savings Bonds. That's what you do, cash them in."

In April, on one of his Fridays off, Hick accompanied me to our bank branch. I don't know which I enjoyed more, the look on the teller's face when Hick pulled that stack of 169 bonds out of a big brown envelope, or the look on Hick's face when the teller told him she couldn't cash them. To be fair, I think she was a bit hasty in telling him, "I can help you with that," when Hick said we were there to cash in some bonds. And perhaps Hick was remiss when he didn't mention that we were there to cash in 169 bonds.

Anyhoo...that's too many for a bank. The way I understand it is that these days, a bank may cash in one or two bonds, but not a whole pile of them. You have to mail them to one of two Treasury sites, one in Minnesota, and one in Pennsylvania. They don't take walk-ins, and Federal Reserve Banks won't do it. However...you must have a completed form to send along with the bonds, a form that is certified by your financial institution.

So...I got to looking on the innernets. That's how you find out accurate information, right? Hick took an alternate route, and called the Treasury department. Between the info he relayed to me, and what I found...we got our stuff together. I had a blank form (it says not to sign it unless in the presence of a verifying entity), and a list of all 169 bonds, the bonds themselves, an official death certificate, and my ID and bank account information.

The only problem was...where could we find someone with a MEDALLION?

Much to Hick's dismay, the workers at our bank branch said they could not certify our bond form because they lacked a MEDALLION. Our financial advisor had his secretary call to see if their office could do it, but they could not, since they did not have a MEDALLION. He offered to send our form to one of their higher-up offices in the city, get it certified with a MEDALLION, have them send it back to us, and then we could send it in. That sounded too convoluted to me.

What was the big deal about this MEDALLION? I had no idea what it was. A MEDALLION in my mind is a heavy trinket worn around the neck, like gold bling on a necklace. And nobody we talked to seemed to have one just laying around the office. Even though we checked with places that are in the business of having millions and billions of dollars flowing through their offices every day. This MEDALLION must be really valuable, to be so scarce. I guess maybe it has to be protected, lest some lowly employee take it home for the weekend and flash it around the disco while clubbing internet while taking selfies. You can't have your MEDALLION turning up in unauthorized settings all willy-nilly, like a garden gnome on an unplanned around-the-world vacation.

Friday, we drove over to Bill-Paying Town, to the main office of our bank. Hick said they'd be able to help us. Of course nothing ever goes quite as planned by Val Thevictorian. Especially when Hick has a hand in the planning.

There's much more to this story, but I'm going to cut you a little break here, and go out of sequence momentarily, so as not to leave you hanging, and reveal my first impression of the MEDALLION.

The bank lady excused herself from her glass cubicle office, saying she was just going to get the MEDALLION. Finally! The big secret was about to be revealed. I was fully expecting her to strut back in with a giant medal around her neck, bouncing off her boobage with each step, flaunting that MEDALLION for all it was worth, like an Olympic gold medal. Perhaps she'd even have an armed security guard accompanying her. After all, it was a rare MEDALLION!

I leaned back to see around Hick's shoulders, watching the bank lobby for that lady's return. Here she came! But there was nothing around her neck! What in the Not-Heaven? She sat down behind her computer and placed a box on the glass-topped desk. It was a rather worn box. Cardboard. Black. With white printing too small to read. About the size a 1970 Lady Norelco shaver might come in. The corners were skinned up a bit. Then she opened up the box and took out the MEDALLION!

It looked like a plastic name stamp that you can order from those inserts in the newspaper.
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Tomorrow...more on the MEDALLION quest, and a bondage faux pas by Val.