Some friends of mine and I decided to go to the inauguration. It was pretty expensive, and I was told at the gate that Barack Obama had declared that his economic stimulus package required that everyone pay in cash.
I happened to have enough money so I gave it to the cashier. She looked through my stack of twenties and said, “I can’t take this, it’s foreign currency.”
It turned out that paper bills had pictures of the different states on them like quarters do. She was holding a “Puerto Rican” twenty. “This isn’t a state,” she insisted.
“It’s a territory!”
“This currency isn’t real.”
“Look,” I said, “if I were trying to make counterfeit money, I wouldn’t print Spanish all over it, would I?” Then I offered to show her a Wikipedia entry that would prove I was right.
“Whatever,” she said. “Go in.” But the inauguration was already over.
President Obama, you owe me.