money, money, money

Let me tell you a little lesson about American currency. The twenty dollar bill looks like this:

A few years ago, my family went to the US Mint in Washington D.C. It was so fun and interesting to see how these valuable pieces of paper are made. The security features and everything. The other night, I learned a new security feature. Let me tell you about it...

I had a class party the next day so I needed to go get some donuts. My mom's in town -Hooray! More on that later- and she didn't want to go into the store with me. Michael didn't want to go into the store with me either. So they sent me alone. Michael gave me a twenty and I headed into the store.

24 donuts later and a few long lines later, I was in the express checkout line. I get up to the front, give the cashier my donuts and my twenty ready to go. She then takes the twenty Michael gave me and says, "I'm sorry. I cannot accept this. This is counterfeit money."

Seriously. What do you do when someone says that to you? All I could say was, "Are you serious?" The reason why I asked that was because when I was in line forever, I had the cash out and noticed this weird corner that kind of looked like someone had cut it weird. I thought to myself that would be weird if this was counterfeit... Nah that doesn't happen in real life.

Then I get to the cashier and that's what she says to me! Well, that was only money I had, so I had to call Michael to come in and use a credit card. She then informs us that she was able to "classify" our cash as counterfeit because Mr. Jackson didn't have any ridges on his jacket. Who knew?

The cashier then informs us that it's store policy to confiscate the "counterfeit" money. Michael is now a bit grouchy because my donuts were now $34. It was quite the disappointment. I was really worried because the only time we get cash is either from the ATM or money people give us because we sold something to them. Recently, Michael sold a cell phone on craig's list so he was worried that he had over $100 in counterfeit. However, he then realized that this particular twenty came from a birthday card sent to him by relatives!

Michael was worried that his relatives might have a bunch of counterfeit so he called them to tell them about the situation. He had to keep telling them, "No, you don't need to send me more... That's not why I'm calling...I just don't want you to have more counterfeit."

What a lesson! Now that you learned so much about the US currency, go check your twenties today! And I'll keep you posted on whether or not the secret service starts investigating us counterfeiters.