It’s a really lame joke, conceived in a moment of semi-drunkenness last night at a friend’s place and not at all well thought out. She has a change jar on her kitchen table. She’s had three $20s and a mound of change in it for months. Last night as I was walking past it on my way to grab another drink I thought it would be funny to mess around with the amounts in the jar. Take a twenty out then, let her wonder about it or see if she even noticed, then in a couple of weeks put in two twenties, then the next week pull one back out, and so on. I know, lame. I said I was half-loaded. Anyways, so I get home from work today and there’s an email from her asking if i knew anything about the $20. I already emailed back that I don’t, but aside from the joke not being all that funny she realy wasn’t supposed to notice this quickly; there needed to be time in between my visit and her spotting the missing twenty so she might think she had just mis-remembered the amount.
So is there any way to save the joke? Or is it so completely unfunny that I should just fess up?
I can’t really comment on how funny it could have been, but since she noticed so soon, and e-mailed you, I think you need to fess up. It’s unsalvageable at this point.
Houch! I might be a bit suspicious of the honest explanation now. Hindsight being 20/20, I think I might have started with the extra twenty part of the bit.
Whether it’s funny or not, fess up, apologize profusely and explain your intent. But be prepared for her to believe until her dying day that you tried to steal from her.
I had £20 stolen from me.
There were three suspects, two of whom were good friends.
After a lot of embarrassment, it turned out the third person had brought their daughter (who had a criminal record) who had almost certainly taken the money.
I never got the money back and it caused unpleasantness all around.
Yeah, the drunken brain seems to have a habit of finding things that are frequently bizarre to sober folks. You really blew it when you lied. It’s gonna’ take a long time to live this one down. If you really want the friendship to survive, you’ll just have to take your lumps and hope. Might be a time to think about going on the wagon for awhile.
Well, on the bright side, if you had put an extra 20 in the jar first, then she probably would have pocketed it and never said a word, then you would be out $20! That would be funny.
Nope better fess up now.
If you were writing this to Ann Landers, she might have said, “Fess up. Then clip this article, and tell her you wrote it.”
I am going to say something similar. Tell her what you did, and email her the link to this thread. That way, she can see in context what really happened.
You could try putting an envelope in her mailbox that has a ransom note. Have a picture of the $20 bill tied to a little doll chair with a blindfold over Andrew Jackson’s eyes, and the demands cut and pasted from printed words in magazines, just like the detective shows.
Say that unless she pays 99 cents in unmarked coins, she’ll never see Andrew again. Then tell her to drop off the money at the following address, which is your house. Or a local restuarant where you two like to go, where you treat her to lunch and pay for it with the twenty.
I am presenting playing a joke on one of my employees like that. I have kidnapped her stuffed bear and am having friends from all around the country send postcards from “pinky”. The funniest part is she has asked everyone in the office other than me if they know anything about it. I guess bosses aren’t supposed to have a sense of humor.
Money jokes seem to backfire. I was at a hole-in-the-wall bar with some friends once. There was a jukebox that took quarters only. My friend was going to play some music, so I volunteered some cash. It was a million dollar bill with either Kennedy or Clinton on it. My friend didn’t look at the bill, just went up top the bar and asked the bartender/owner for quarters. He freaked out, accusing us of being counterfitters. We were thrown out, embarrassed. I guess the guy thought we really expected 4 million quarters?
