Some years ago, before I started writing again and was still selling real estate, I had an experience that set my present-day standard for “getting even” when I see others who are suddenly wronged. The memory came to light as I sat in the predawn darkness yesterday and began to plan ways that I can help SunTrust Bank understand they shouldn’t charge a fee for cashing a payroll check drawn on their bank.

Earlier this week I cashed a check at a SunTrust branch and, since I have no account at a bank that treats people like SunTrust does, they charged me a $5.00 fee to get my money. Now, in the way I have learned to do, I am trying to be as clever as I can to show SunTrust it shouldn’t treat people in a way they feel their money has been unfairly taken and let’s just say I’ve got more ideas hatching than a North Georgia hen house.

My zeal is not about my $5.00 check-cashing fee. Instead, I’ve found nothing is more fun than fighting for “the little people” who have no recourse when a bully nicks them the way that bank just did me. And as I am now conjuring up some rather hysterical ways to help the SunTrust “policy makers” understand greed should never displace kindness, I remembered the most delightful “proud of flesh” I’ve ever attempted to carve off a hide.

Suffice it to say I’ve had some pretty bad struggles with my right arm. Surgeries and infections and a myriad of maladies have been near-constant companions since 1990 and about five or six years back I was being treated by a local orthopedic group as a complement to the life-saving care I was getting at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

One morning I woke up and could tell things were starting to “head south.” My arm was puffy and oozing. I felt terrible, with fever and nausea, and knew something was amiss so I called the Minnesota doctors and was told to start taking heavy antibiotics immediately and "head north." I deferred, since I also knew the chances were good that if I did I’d have surgery. I begged off, staying in Tennessee and trying to see if the medicine would work instead.

Of course, you have to have a prescription to get drugs. Most pharmacies weren’t yet open for the day so the "Mayo Medicos" couldn’t call one in. I said I'd get a doctor here to write the script, but when I called the local orthopedic office, I got a recording that instructed me to leave my request “at the sound of the tone” and to then check with my pharmacy “after 5 o’clock to see if we have called a prescription in.”

Are you kidding me? I was oozing right then, not “after 5 p.m.” So early that afternoon, this several hours after my telephoned message had not been returned, I went in person to the orthopedic office to pick up a prescription with my own sick hand.

As I arrived at the packed reception area where some patients were now standing due to a lack of chairs, the receptionist loudly announced anyone waiting to see "Dr. So-and-So" should know he was still in surgery and it would be, at the least, another 90 minutes before he even started seeing that day’s full load of appointments.

There was an audible groan in the waiting area. A pleasant-looking woman then approached the receptionist, saying she’s already waited over an hour but that she had to pick up her kids at school. The haughty receptionist said, in so many words, “tough luck” and told her she would have to reschedule. The earliest opening was in five weeks.

As I watched this unfold, it was unbelievably disappointing to me. The distraught woman, obviously there because something was wrong “right now,” then left the office dejectedly. About that time, the receptionist then turned to me with a pencil and blank sheet of paper, telling me the nurse was “too busy” to see me and to write my request down, then to go to my pharmacy “after 5” to see if a prescription was there.

Furious, I declined. I knew a bunch of good doctors in other specialties so, trust me, I had my prescription within 15 minutes. But the thought of that woman being turned away haunted me fiercely and, by the next morning, I had figured out a plan. I promptly put an ad in the newspaper seeking a "good" orthopedic surgeon.

It was a great ad, saying I had good insurance and noted that the “heavy work” would be done at Mayo Clinic. I asked any reader to “disregard this ad” if you have a telephone that has requires the patient to “push two if you speak Spanish.” Disregard this ad if you have a haughty nurse. Disregard this ad if your staff is “too busy.” Disregard this ad if the patient has to wait longer than 30 minutes after an appointed time.

Well, the thing cost me two or three hundred dollars, but when it appeared in Sunday’s newspaper, my phone started ringing at 7 a.m. It was two giggling nurses on a Memorial Hospital floor who were calling to thank me, saying they had just put a copy on every patient’s charts. I guess I got over 100 responses that first day alone, most from people who were fed up with similar treatment and some from other doctors who wanted to know at just who were my pointed words taking to task. I never told who my target was.

The orthopedic group, who I had already sworn off the day of the incident, soon sent me a certified letter that said they would no longer see me. I absolutely adored that because it confirmed my missile had found its mark and exploded perfectly. I had made my point.

Since then, I’ve been in the Erlanger emergency room on two occasions and “the hospital’s orthopedists” have refused to see me both times, which only adds to my glee. Oh, c’mon, Erlanger ain’t going to let me die and both times the “substitute surgeons” have not only handled the crisis, they’ve become great friends of mine.

As a matter of fact, Erlanger's “substitutes” are, in my way of thinking, twice as good as the shameful “saw bones crowd” the hospital annually pays over $1 million a year to take calls. When I put my ad in the newspaper, I got the vengeance I wanted and then, during the next few years when those guys refused to see me in the E.R., I thought it was funny because I was obviously so much better off.

Now, that ad I wrote has been passed around all over the country. I still get calls about it and I know of several professors, both in business and medical schools, who use it now in college courses. Medical journals and newsletters have published it, too, but I don’t care. I still think it was a good solution and was a perfect way to “project my feelings.”

Sadly, I’ve since learned the same crummy orthopedists still refuse to see other people, some whose gravy isn’t as thick as mine and don’t have the resources I do. They are like the two black guys who told me at the gas station that, every payday, SunTrust nicks them for a “check-cashing fee” and, in my opinion, unfairly takes some of their money.

Well, I’m not in the vengeance business, but it humors me when bullies who “don’t act right” wonder why bad and unpleasant things happen to them. You can count the louts who are on my vengeance list on the fingers of just one hand but … well, sometimes unpleasant things seem to befall them.

Listen, as long as there is a woman who's been waiting for 90 minutes and can’t be seen again for five weeks, and as long as there are some black guys getting “nicked” with a check-cashing fee every time payday comes around, I’ll be there much like Tom Joad in the great book by John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Remember the movie by the same title starring Henry Fonda? I still watch the scene from time to time. That’s where Henry, playing Tom Joad, gives his classic rendition, “Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere.

"Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.”

So that is why I am itching to teach those at SunTrust Bank a lesson in kindness. It’s not about the $5.00 fee-grab. It’s about being there when they nick some other poor guy.

royexum@aol.com