So I'm watching the Yankees embarrass the Padres in front of their own fans several weeks ago when a commercial appears showing how a small-business owner financed a gazillion things for her small restaurant.

The narrator instructed me to "Call 1-800-Success" and made me feel like this would be the warm and cuddly place I was looking for in pursuit of a line of credit. A few days later I dialed the number, which is really American Express Small Business Services, and applied for a $50,000 line of credit, so I can do some advertising, pay my E-ZPass bill -- that's an electronic toll tag that we have in these parts -- and do some other neat stuff. After all, the commercial showed how the restaurant got a delivery of new equipment through 1-800-Success and also left the restaurateur living happily ever after.

The guy on the phone was very nice when I called, and the entire application process took about five minutes. "You'll be notified in six weeks," he said. The whole thing went a bit too quick, I thought. No one asked me about my business, what type it is or what kind of growth I've seen, so I quickly picked up that this would be a line of credit based on me, not my company. Well, two weeks went by and a letter arrived informing me that "unfortunately, we cannot open an account for you at this time."

The letter then went on to explain how American Express scored my application, "which assigns numerical values to the various pieces of information we consider in evaluating an application. Your application did not score enough points to qualify for an account." I felt like I just received my SAT scores.

O.K., so I'm a bit overextended, but who isn't when you run a small business? In essence, this was not a small-business loan. It was a personal loan disguised as one, with just enough Madison Avenue hype needed to make me pick up the phone and inquire. I didn't want a personal loan. I wanted someone who believes enough in my company to take a chance and invest in it. That's what a business loan is.

When you are self-employed, it's like a scarlet letter, only you're walking around with the letter "S" around your neck. On the one hand, you receive a steady stream of solicitations asking for your business, but when you pursue them, you are turned away because of your lack of capital or experience. You're treated like a college student looking for that first job.

Awareness of small business has finally caught up to the big companies like American Express. A new Xerox commercial, for example, shows how its equipment helped a small business compete like a big one and shows a string of angels for entrepreneurs, conferring on solutions for small business.

It's finally sinking in that there's nothing small about small business. Heck, it's practically running the country. Sooner or later, someone will figure out that taking a chance on us small guys may pay off handsomely.

For now, I'll keep eating the Veggie Pocket Pita value meal at Blimpie and hold off on the large biscuits for my dog, Rudy.

George Giokas is the president and CEO of StaffWriters Plus, a specialty agency that places writers in temporary and permanent positions with corporate and other employers. It also provides editorial consulting work. His database includes 2,500 writers and editors specializing in more than 60 categories. His Web site is located at www.staffwriters.com, and you can E-mail him at george@staffwriters.com.