I’m on my dinner break from work. I drive home. I eat something. I want to lie down, but instead, I’ll tell you a slightly amusing story that in no way has anything to do with meerkats. Which is too bad, because I think meerkats are funny.

Over a year ago I DJ a wedding. I have to rent the speakers for the occasion so I go to the same place I rented equipment for the previous wedding. It’s just a couple blocks from my home. Since the wedding is a three-hour drive south of LA and begins in four hours I don’t have time to double check the equipment.

I find the place, which is a good forty-five minutes of twisty road off the highway and begin setting up the equipment. I plug in the mixer, I plug in the turntables, connect the wires, connect the left speaker, connect the right sp– Uh-oh. The guy at the shop gave me the wrong adapter. With horror I realize that there’s no way I’m gonna abe able to connect that right speaker. And we’re an hour from the nearest McDonald’s, let alone the nearest Radio Shack. And it’s a dry wedding (actually only half-dry–it’s a story unto itself. I’ll tell it later,) so there’s no way for me to directly administer first aid to myself.

Then I figure out a way to connect the left speaker to the right speaker directly. That’s a compromise, but it’ll have to do. Both speakers play music, but only the left half of the music, effectively rendering useless any Beatles or jazz I might have brought along. A few audiopiles pick up on that, gleefully, I might add, but for the most part, no one notices.

Back at the shop the guy is embarrassed beyond words. He says that the next time I rent something he’ll give me a big fat discount. Of course, there is no next time. But a few days ago I drop by to pick up a record bag in preparation for Wednesday evening. We get to talking. he says I look familiar. I tell him I rented some equipment a year ago.

“How did it work out?” he asks.

“Well…”

And he remembers the incident. Again, he’s terribly embarrassed, and he says, “Wait right here.” he hurries to the back of the store and returns with a brand new record bag for me to have. On the house.

Which is kind of funny, because I just bought one from him 27 seconds earlier.

But he’s a nice guy, and I always say, you can’t have too many record bags.

Um…end of story.

Unless you still want some meerkat action: