one time I made Michael W. Smith look like a thief.

Does anyone else get Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman mixed up? Because in my brain, they're synonymous.

they're both around 50 years old.

they both got famous in the mid '80s.

they both sing similar styles of Christian music.

they've both done some acting.

they both live in Franklin, Tennessee.

and heck, they're even friends with each other.

Same person, am I right?

And for that reason, I will refer to them collectively as Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman.


There's just one difference: only one of them has apologized to me for appearing to shoplift.


For a year and a half, I worked at a hipster clothing store. [to protect its identity, we'll call it Turban Snout-glitters.]

One morning, I'd just opened Turban Snout-glitters, and a man walked in. He looked remarkably like Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman, but Turban Snout-glitters didn't seem like the type of place he would shop, so I promptly dismissed the notion.

The Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman lookalike shopped for quite a while before he finally walked up to my cash register to make his purchase. We politely made small talk, and I learned that he was about to head over to make a music video.

Music video?!
Hold up.
Perhaps this wasn't just a lookalike.
Was I really talking to the Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman?

Fortunately, Turban Snout-glitters has a policy that an ID must be shown in order to make any purchase with a credit card. And even more fortunately, Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman happened to pay with a credit card.

He handed me his driver's license, and sure enough, right there at the top it said "Michael Whitaker Smith".

Holy healing rain, Batman.

I got all jittery and sweaty and stumbly, and suddenly English seemed to be a foreign language to me.

Somehow, I managed to keep myself somewhat composed until he turned his back, and then any last morsel of "I-don't-care-about-famous-people" within me evaporated as I became a giddy child.

He'd about reached the door and was about to exit Turban Snout-glitters when the alarm went off.

My heart stopped.

The rendition of "Friends are Friends Forever" that had been triumphantly playing in my head suddenly vanished.

Did I seriously forget to remove a security sensor from the shirt of a multiple Grammy and Dove award winning artist?

As Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman turned back around to return to the now sweat-soaked, non-English-speaking, majorly-traumatized version of the friendly Turban Snout-glitters employee he'd been chatting with, I sheepishly apologized profusely for forgetting to remove a hard tag.

Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman must have sensed my embarrassment and sincere remorse, because as I rummaged through his bag to find the rogue tag, he conjured up some scenario that made my oversight appear to be his error.

Though I'm quite unsure of how it happened, our interaction concluded with Michael W. Smeven Curtis Chapman apologizing to me, and me forgiving him and reassuring him that it was ok.

Epilogue:

If you watch 0:30-0:36, you'll see people pulling clothing out of a shopping bag with a hot pink interior. Yes, that's the bag of clothing from Turban Snout-glitters from that fateful day.