By Bob
March 5, 1998
Have you ever been in the presence of a true name dropper? I'm talking about someone who can't tell a story about any part of their life without casually mentioning that some famous person was somehow involved in it.
When I was working as a consultant at a local company a few years ago, there was a young man named Dan who worked in the same department who was the worst name dropper I've ever seen. At every meeting, no matter how big or small, he'd find a way to drop a famous name or two, on every occassion, even when asking a question. "I have a question. I was at the blah, blah conference last Friday, and I had lunch with Bill Gates, and Bill said to me, 'blah, blah', and that makes me wonder if blah, blah..." I was tempted to raise my hand and say "Was that YOU that had lunch with Bill Gates last Friday? When I had dinner with him on his yacht that night, he complained about how BORING his lunch had been!"
My father-in-law, Rev. Paul M., is a pretty humble man, but he has one of the best "brush with greatness" stories I've ever heard. While driving through the Princeton University campus one day in the 1940's he saw Dr. Albert Einstein walking along the side of the road. Paul pulled over to the side of the road and called out, "Hey, would you like a ride?" The great genius replied, "No, thanks!"
I am definitely not a name dropper, though I freely admit that I've had very few direct brushes with famous people. As a matter of fact, I've only met two famous people in my whole life: Randy, the lead singer of the country band Alabama, and the famous rock guitarist, Phil Keaggy.
I met Randy back in the early '80s, when I worked for a public television station in Toledo, Ohio, and Alabama was performing there one night. At a press conference in which our station's on-air personality didn't show up, the job fell to me, so I raised my hand to ask the band a question. Randy immediately expressed delight to the room that I was wearing jeans and a casual shirt, unlike all the other reporters who were in suits and ties. After the press conference, I went up and talked to him for a few minutes and he gave me a signed photograph, which I still have in an album.
I met Phil Keaggy three different times at three different concerts. That's no major coup on my part -- Phil often takes a break during his co-headliner's set and just walks out into the crowd to listen to the band and visit with anyone who sees that he's there. Anyway, the first time I met Phil was back in the mid-1970's in a gymnasium in Toledo, Ohio. I shook his hand and told him that his guitar playing was in such a different league than my own that I didn't even want to tell people that I played the guitar any more. Phil told me, "There's always going to be someone better than you and someone not as good as you. But you're the only you."
You know, now that I've thought this thing through, maybe I am a name dropper. Last week, while visiting friends with my wife, our hostess asked me if I'd like a cold drink. I casually replied,
"Well, as Albert Einstein once said to my father-in-law, 'No, thanks!'"