Sugar Substitute and ELO

Photo: Alan Levine

Experienced a couple of funny anecdotes over the weekend and what’s a blog for if not to share such moments?

*****

Friday night, a couple of my friends and I hit a coffee shop we’ve only been to a few times. It’s small, but has good coffee, so it’s always worth stopping there.

After we ordered our coffee, one of my friends saw a new sweetner – one I’ve never heard of, nor can I remember the name of it. But he opened a small package of it, poured a little on his pointer finger and gave it a taste. My other friend asked for some too, so friend #1 pours a neat line of the white stuff onto friend #2’s pointer finger just as a baurista looks over at us.

I knew what she was thinking – we were doing drugs, which is pretty comical given that we are three 40-something Christian dudes whose notion of going crazy includes trying the latest blend of frou-frou coffee at Borders, before closing the place down at 9:00 pm.

“Oh!” the baurista said, realizing we were dabbling in sugar substitute. She placed her hand over her heart. “I thought you guys were doing drugs!” She laughed. “Not that I would judge or anything, but you cannot do drugs in my store.”

“We don’t do drugs,” we said collectively – as if we actually did do them, we would admit to it in a situation like this.

“I’m just saying, if you did, you couldn’t do it in my store,” she said.

Okay, we got it. No drugs in her store.

*****

Saturday, I walked into a Radio Shack to trade cell phone plans. The salesman who helped me was knowledgable and we were able to get through the process fairly quickly. Toward the end, we started talking about music.

“What was your first concert?” he asked.

“ELO,” I said, thinking about the band for the first time in years. I think I owned one of their singles, “Don’t Bring Me Down,” when I was a kid. The only thing I can remember about the concert was a robot that came out and introduced the band.

“Ah, I’m about ten years before you then,” he said. “ELP for me.”

ELO, ELP – what are the chances of the two names being so similar?

“Emerson, Lake & Powell?” I said, apparently thinking Colin Powell was part of the group at one time.

“Emerson, Lake & Palmer.”

“Ah, okay. I was close.”