“Is that really your name?”

I looked up at the waiter, Joe, who was looking at the signed credit card receipt for our dinner. Alexis and I were in Hannegan’s Restaurant, in the riverfront area of St Louis. We are in St Louis for the next week on another training trip and we had just walked down to the riverfront from the downtown Renaissance Grand Hotel where we are staying. We had enjoyed a simple but filling meal and Alexis was in the restroom while I was paying up. Our waiter, Joe, had just taken my receipt away and then turned with that question.

“Uhhm, yeah…”, I replied.

“Man, you know that’s cool, right?”, said Joe.

“Hahah….. really?”, I looked at him quizzically.

“Yeah, you saw that movie, right?”, he asked.

Okay, so at this point I am thinking - this guy looks too young to have seen “Jewel in the Crown”, a movie about the British Empire in India that I have never seen but people have told me there is a character in that movie named “Hari Kumar”.

“You know, Harold and Kumar?”, he explained further. And the light dawned like a Salvador Dali painting on a foggy day…

“Aaaahhh… yes, of course! Hey man, I can give you my autograph if you want, matter of fact, I just did that!”, I played along.

“Thanks man! Yeah, whenever I see a cool name like this on a receipt, I take a picture of it, hey check this out, last week there was a woman in here with this in her purse and I took a picture,” said Joe, as he pulled out his camera phone and rapidly clicked buttons to pull up a grainy fuzzy image of what looked like an open purse with a fuzzy rabbit inside.

“That’s a kangaroo,” came the explanation.

Yes, folks, apparently last week there was a kangaroo convention in town, and this lady from Australia happened to be having dinner here, with a LIVE BABY KANGAROO… IN HER PURSE.

And he thought my NAME was cool?

Why do I not hear that quiet voice in my soul saying “Welcome to St Louis, Kumars, welcome to reality”…

On the way back to the hotel, as we walked past an intersection, a young man appeared across the street and started across the intersection toward us, yelling “Hey! Hey!” as he came. We slowed a bit, curious by the spectacle, unsure of what to do. As he came close we could tell he was drunk, and with a very thick slurred accent he asked “youfrasafkjhashdsastlouis?”

“Huh?”

“YOUFRASMSHDSMMSHAMASTLOUIS?”

“No man, we don’t know, we’re not from here,” I said.

“Wherfrom?!”

“We’re from out of town,” replied Alexis brightly.

“Yeah?! WHERSSHHTAYin?”

“We’re staying at a hotel up here,” she said, as I began to see where this was headed.

I wanted to say, “No no, we live right here, and what she means to say is we’re headed to this hotel here where our heavily armed FBI friends are having a little party for us.”

But the moment passed, and the guy said: “Oh… hey ya got some shaaange or sumthin?”

I said, “Na man, we don’t have any cash,” which was true, we had used our spare change on the journey here and didn’t have any cash on us.

And the guy goes, “SO WHAT YA GOT FOR ME?!”

And I replied, “Nuthin, man,” and we walked away briskly.

Welcome to St Louis, Kumars, welcome to reality…