Common Fraud; A Real Story Retold for a Contrained Writing Contest.

This is my response to @svashta's constrained writing contest. A very similar story happened today, but I had to change it up a little in order to meet the format. Here is my story using all verbs in the -ing form.

My storytelling is beginning with me praying, meditating, visualizing and hoping.

As I was journaling I kept envisioning a financial miracle. I kept asking myself: What would it take for a financial miracle to occur? What would it take for a financial miracle to occur? And then the drifting and dreaming and sleeping started happening.

The next morning I was hurrying and bustling and rushing. The kids must be getting to school, bills are needing attention, breakfasts will not be cooking themselves. As I am running down my steps, I am finding myself seeing an official envelope.

My financial miracle was happening.

I begin reading a series of instructions, telling me to be cashing a money order. After the cashing, I must begin the shopping, reviewing, and spending. Some of the spending includes the transferring of some money to the Phillipines.

What is happening? I am wondering to myself. The letter gets another reading, and then the envelope finds itself receiving another looking at. What am I finding? A money order in the amount of $998.00 USD.

I am smiling and grinning and scheming. Surely the person in the Philippines is not to he needing the $828.00 USD that I am to be sending him. I start thinking of keeping the whole sum to myself. Maybe I won't even be telling the husband of the Manna from the sky. I am mentally shopping and dining.

Then I begin common sensing. I find myself calling the fraud department, and confirming the numbers that are on my document. The money order is a fraudulent copy. Cashing it at the post office is impossible, depositing it to my bank account will only be sending the bank to collecting from me later.

The left side of my brain is doing some hurting now. It is not because of the fraudulent check, it is from the telling of the story and its constrictions in the writing.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I really did get a $998.00 money order, lol. It must be the Universe making fun of me. I joke around a lot about how money isn't real, about how I blog for tokens, about how its all monopoly paper at the end of the day anyway.

Well, today's money order might as well have been monopoly money. And I am finding myself being a little more respecting of "real" money.

Here is a picture from the USPS website (taken as a screen shot from my computer) showing you how to check if your money order is "the real thing."

Have you ever held counterfeit money, checks, money orders, etc in your possession? Did they look even a little bit real? This one definitely looked "real."