$4,000 Rent Check

That sounds like a pretty expensive rent right? That's what I was thinking too, well actually, I wasn't really thinking at all apparently when I wrote our rent check for $4,000 when it is only $1,195 a month. So here is the "You see what had happened was..." story:

It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon and I was enjoying my lunch on the couch, not watching tv because the remote has been MIA since Tuesday. I hear a knock knock at the door. I got up, looked through the peep hole, saw a strange man standing in the hallway that I have never seen before, automatically unlock and open the door. It was one of the guys from our realty company here to collect our monthly rent. Last time he came on a Wednesday we were not home but he said he would be collecting again on Thursday. Well none of us were going to be there and ended up paying our rent late that month. So he gave his little shhhpeal and said he would be coming back again tomorrow (Thursday). I immediately thought, "Oh great, no one will be here tomorrow, I should definitely pay it now since I am home and perfectly capable of writing a check!" Keep in mind that I was the only one home at the time out of my two other roommates. I asked the guy if I could pay it now and he said yes. I had never paid the rent before, so I asked him if he happened to know how much our rent was, he didn't know. Feeling pressured to pay it right then since no one would be home on Thursday, I knew I could just figure it out. Well I knew that it was $387 per person a month (turns out that's not even right, it's $397.50, actually that might be wrong too. I'm still not really sure what the exact amount is. It doesn't matter because I will never be allowed to pay our rent again.) and that there were three of us. I also knew that we each just deposited $1000 in our joint checking account (this has nothing to do with our rent but it will help you understand why I wrote the rent check for what I did.) So I was doing the math in my head, wrote the amount in the box on the check and then started to write out the amount on the line of the check, "three thousand nine hundred and eighty seven dollars and 0/100." I remember being concerned that I was running out of room on the check but just thought that I was in my "big letter and spacing" phase again. By the way, if you are like my roommates and wondering where I got the 900 from for the check, I am still wondering that too. I understand my logic for the $3,000 and the $87 but the $900 is a mystery. So I carefully rip the check out of the book and hand it to the man. I texted my one roommate, Kari, asking her how much our rent was. I just wanted to make sure I wrote the correct amount. She said she didn't know and to check our bank account online, so I did. The main page comes up and I see that our total balance is $3,850. I almost crapped my pants right then and there. This was my "AHA" moment. I just realized that I wrote a check for more than we even had in our account! What the hell was I thinking?! Our rent is not $4,000 a month! I immediately called the realty company and told the lady I just wrote a check for the complete wrong amount (I never told her the exact amount in fear that she would evict me for stupidness) and asked if I could come down, rip up the check and write them a new one. She put me on hold for a few minutes and during this time I was laughing, just thinking about how much crap Kari was going to give me for this. She came back on the phone and said she would take down my name and number but with 600 checks coming in right now that she couldn't guarantee it. At this point, I still thought this whole situation was funny, until I talked to my mom. My mom has a tendency to do a lot of ditsy mistakes, so I thought she would find this story humbling and entertaining. I explained everything to her and her first response was, "What were you thinking when you wrote out a check for $4,000?!" Apparently by the tone in her voice, she did not find this entertaining or humbling, at all. She told me that I could call the bank and have them put a hold on the check if I knew the check number. I told her I didn't know the check number. "You didn't write it in your checkbook?" She asked. "We don't write anything in our checkbook." I told her. "Hannah! I'm worried about you girls!" she said in sheer disappoint and disbelief. I said, "Mom, everything is online, it's okay." That is not true but I didn't know what else to say. "Well Hannah, you need to find out the exact amount in your account and go deposit however much you need in case they cash that check. If it bounces, you are going to get charged a fee and that is your fault, you wrote the check." she told  me. I am really glad she explained this to me, because up until this point I was wondering who just wrote a check for $4,000. So I got off the phone with her and no longer thought this was as funny as I used to. I figured out how much I needed to deposit into our account just in case they did cash the check. I deposited the money and thought all was good and dandy. Turns out my roommate, Kari, decided to pay the cable bill, and now our balance was $3,985, TWO DOLLARS SHORT! After all that, we were TWO DOLLARS SHORT! Point of the story is this, one, this is still not as funny as it could be because we are still waiting to hear from the realty company. Two, I am never allowed to pay our rent. Three, my mom does not have the same sense of humor as me. But there is one good  thing from this whole situation, when I paid the rent, or really, four months of rent, the guy collecting it gave me a candy cane. So now I have a $4,000 candy cane to show for it!