The acoustic coffeehouse on West Walnut Street was a happening place to be the Saturday night before last.
Not only was Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine being shown next door, but the place was filled with the noise of acoustic music, your usual political discussions and college-age Green Party banter.
Waging war on Hasbro’s intellectual battlefield, Scrabble, with a couple of friends at the splendidly comfy caf, I noticed something strange about the position of two words in particular.
The carefully placed words “ouch” and “dilate” failed to catch my attention. However, two words I don’t think I’ve ever heard uttered in the same sentence before, did.
I doubt that until this moment they’ve even been printed in this newspaper before side by side.
“Urine,” the bodily fluid spelled out on the board earlier by my friend, Daniel, that convinced someone to refer to him as a deep thinker, was sitting right near the word “pies.”
“Urine” right near “pies”. “Urine pies.”
The moment I laid eyes on the nine-lettered wooden tiles, my heart skipped a beat and I remained forever changed.
It was a very strange moment, but alas, a positively quirky one. Of course, there was nothing else to do but announce my discovery to the world, or more conveniently, to Daniel, who was sitting right next to me.
“Urine pies!” I said aloud.
As soon as I uttered those words, a man sitting at the table next to us gracefully fell out of his flimsy chair, and with a loud thump, which garnered applause from just about everyone in the caf. All the while, I couldn’t help but think that I was the cause of his misfortunate fall.
“Urine pies.” Oh my! Did I really say the words out loud?
Naturally, both words have their own associations. Pies -hot, steaming and tasty. Urine -hot and steaming as well, but with an ammonia-like odor due to its 5 percent makeup of nitrogenous wastes.
Just think of the unthinkable. The seemingly opposite words “urine” and “pies” side by side, sharing a few laughs, catching a late night flick, taking yoga classes together and pretty much totally bonding.
It’s not such a crazy idea.
Perhaps some cruel inmates serving time with Martha Stewart will sarcastically ask her to bake them some tasty “urine pies” in jail as she wipes her streaming tears.
What a cruel, vicious intrusion urine could have into the world of baked treats. Or maybe not. Imagine urine cookies, urine doughnuts and “urinous” Little Debbie cakes.
It would seem that urine would poison the delicate flavors of the foods we love most; however, many people the world over have faith in the golden fluid’s medicinal qualities.
Some individuals that are advocates of urine therapy, urinophiles as they are called, would argue that baked goods with wee-wee in them are beneficial for good health and well being.
After all, more than three million Chinese drink their own urine in the belief that it is good for their health, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Also, for a number of holy men in India, urine is the elixir of choice, a tradition carried on for some thousands of years.
When I first saw the two words together, I ruled out the possibility of something as positive as urine therapy, which is not only lauded by urinophiles but also by those in the medical profession. Why should I have made such a big to do about urine and pies?
It is because I am silly and unwise to the ways of the world. Realizing that two very different things could actually make beautiful music (or something like that) made me all the wiser.
Sitting in the coffeehouse engaged in a game of Scrabble with a few compatriots, I surprised myself by noticing the two words in close proximity on the board. After the post-initial shock and dismay, I came to realize that the two words aren’t so dissimilar or gross when used together. They merely represent a union of two unlike things that could very likely change things for the better.
All the world has to do is give “urine pies” the same opportunity that peas have had – and give them a chance.
Baking a pee pie is certainly not going to be one of my week’s activities.
However, deep thought and meditation upon this mature issue already has been.

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