Expert texperts--not.

The author of this New York Times article about the physical dangers of texting ought to have accompanied me to Washington Mutual last week.

If my bank was going down the pipes, as WaMu is, and I was the boss, I'd circulate a memo: "Please do not text while handling clients' hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of transactions today."

The problem at my bank is that the supervisors, who have come and gone as fast as a patron of a Times Square peep show in the 80s, aren't any further along etiquette-wise.

If you ask a question and they don't hear you, for example, the response is "What happened?"

If I make a withdrawal larger than what I would consider average, they ask what I'm going to do with the money. And, of course, eyebrow, lip, nose piercings are left in because you want to know people who work there are wasssuuuuuup? Waz at da club las' night yo.

Hell in a handbasket? Nah. A free and open society, where trends start and are or are not absorbed by the mainstream, after which they are perceived as normal, and people like me who pick on others who say "Awesome!" every two or three words are seen as odd.

Besides, my teller with the pierces and text messages is a car lover who knows what I do, and we talk while I judge him. He'll find his real vocation one day. I actually avoid that WaMu, which is 3 blocks away, because it is dirty, slow and the tellers text and frequently appear to be hung over. If possible, I go up to Riverdale where the pros are.

I also leave my neighborhood to go to the Post Office, supermarket, stationary store, to eat at restaurants and have dry cleaning done for all the above reasons.