roblathan.com

My phone broke. So on Saturday I went to my local Verizon store to get a new one. So did Knicks point guard, Stephon Marbury. The two of us bonded pretty hard. We both had to go through the same ole rigamorole: fill out this contract, show me your I.D., sign this autographed picture of yourself to give to my son, etc. Actually, the Verizon guy neglected to ask for my autograph. Another difference was that Stephon Marbury’s phone costs $470. Mine was $10. To lesson this discrepancy, I figured I should engage my fellow phone consumer in conversation.

Me: “Hey Stephon, I’m a fan of yours. I’m from Atlanta. I used to go see you play when you played for Georgia Tech.”
Stephon: “That’s cool. What brings you to New York?”
Me: “Well, I live here.”
Stephon: “What do you do?”
Me: “Um, well I’m sort of a comedian.”
Stephon: “Cool.”

Luckily he didn’t ask me to, “Say something funny.” (That’s what most people demand from me on the spot when I inform them that I’m a comedian.) And luckily for him, I didn’t ask him how everything was going with the Knicks. No need. We were way past all that. We had a deep bond that couldn’t be broken over such petty things. And down the road, we both had an understanding that if one of us had a tough game or a rough show, we could always just call each other. Stephon on his Bluetooth RAZR. And me on my oversized, clunker of a phone. And we could just talk it out. After all, it’d be free.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.