Would Anyone Like a Mento?

I have a very embarrassing story I would like to tell you. Most people have a "most embarrassing moment" they share at parties or group activities. You might laugh at this one, I know I do every day since it happened. Let me set the context for you...

The Relationship:
I have a professional coach/mentor. He and I share something very unique in common, which lends itself well to the mentoring relationship. We both are students of industries, life and all kinds of other topics. My mind is always moving, analyzing, creating, synthesizing, categorizing and questing for more information. He is the same way. He always has at least four yellow legal notepads filled with stray ideas and thoughts. We talk about a myriad of topics every time we are together.

The Place:
We have a set place in town that serves great steaks and we partake of a couple of other vices from time to time. It is a quiet and dark place. One light over the table but the glow from the 72" muted big screen TV gives plenty of back lighting.

The Night:
Tonight is a good night. I have a bunch of real estate ideas to throw his way. I also want to plant a seed for a very specific idea about his company. It seems lately, I have been so active in thought that I could have filled the whole night with conversation. Anyway, we finish our steaks and start to lean back in our chairs to let the food settle and our minds regroup. We laugh again and the conversation picks up again.

The Moment:
We are talking about so many things it seems we are not listening to each other finish our thoughts before the next topic spills out on the table. I am talking about a very specific idea for our company that I would like to see happen. As I am pontificating eloquently about this idea (I mean I am really into this idea), he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bunch of stuff: change, wrappers, cough drop, a pocket knife, watch batteries or whatever a forty something man keeps in his pocket. I am still talking and he is nodding without eye contact. You know when people do that and you wonder what is distracting them? He then places a white round oval in front of me. I think to myself, 'How nice, a Mento, an after dinner mint, the steaks were seasoned with a tinge of garlic.'

I reach out in the middle of my sentence and pop it into my mouth. He stops fiddling with his handful of pocket luggage and looks at me with a mixture of dismay and shock. At that very instant, I realize it is not a Mento that I just popped into my mouth. I quickly spit the white polished stone out and placed it on the table swatting away the line of spit. I suprisingly say, "That's not a Mento!" He says, "No, it is not. It is part of an illustration I am going to show you." Adding the other colored stones to the now moist white one on the table, he starts in with his idea.

I start laughing uncontrollably. He starts to laugh a little and I blurt out, "Do you realize, I just tried to eat your visual aid?" We laugh harder and harder. All I can say is: It is a good thing we have a good relationship or I would have more to worry about than just bad breath.

March 2004