Scamming for Fun

About a week ago Kori and I had an evening to ourselves. Number 4 was going to be tied up with activities all evening so we decided to do some shopping and just spend some time together. We were having a good time shopping at her favorite spots but finding nothing exciting. As we left the mall and were heading to our car we started discussing plans for the rest of the night. Those plans usually entail going to a movie, renting a movie or watching a movie on Netflix. I suggested all those options and then another idea came to me.

Currently the musical Hamilton is in town for a couple weeks and everyone has been talking about it. The tickets went on sale months ago and I was lucky enough to get four for our family to attend. The show we would be attending was over a week away and we were so excited to be able to go. On a whim I suggested seeing if we could get any last minute tickets to go see it that night. Kori looked on Craigslist and sure enough we could and the seller was willing to accept our lowball price for tickets.

This is the point at which most of you are saying, “This seems too good to be true.” We ran home changed clothes and waited for the seller to determine a meeting place for us to pick up the tickets. After we were dressed and about ready to head out he(well I assume it was a he) said he couldn’t meet us because he was working but he could transfer the tickets electronically as soon as we sent the funds. At this point, Kori and I were very skeptical as well and there was no way we were going to send him all the money.

I told Kori, if things didn’t work out, we would have a nice dinner downtown together and we would have a good story to tell. As we headed out, we still weren’t sure what was going to happen. First we ask for proof of purchase, which he supplied, but I still didn’t feel good about it. We told him send us one ticket and we will send you all the money but he wouldn’t do that because he said we could scam him. At that point, we had already parked downtown and it was 10 minutes until the curtain. We decided we would send him a quarter of the money and then he would send one ticket.

Well we sent the money and you guessed it no ticket and no further communication. Luckily for us we were not out that much money. Since we were downtown I said lets go have a nice meal and worry about the scammer later. We did just that. We laughed about fun memories. We talked about our life in the present moment. We dreamed about what our future would look like. We had quality time just the two of us. It was a fun evening and one that wouldn’t have happened had we not decided to try something new. And no one ate all the chips and guac!

Now I am not telling you to go out and get scammed by someone on Craigslist but I am telling you to get out of your comfort zone and do something spontaneous once in a while. You never know what will happen but I am pretty sure it will create some great memories. Don’t limit the experience to your significant other either, try it with your kids too. Those are usually the experiences or “adventures” as my kids call them that they will remember. Life it too short to worry about scammers. But once in a while have the guac to myself is a good thing!