A cake with candles

We were at the Springfield Diner celebrating the birthday of one of the disciples. I went to the counter and asked them to bring a cake to the table and to put candles on the cake. The lady looked puzzled, so again I said, “I would like candles on the cake.”

Finally the waitress brought the cake to the table, along with half a cantaloup. She was about to put the cantaloup on top of the cake when everybody started laughing. They asked her what she was doing.

She said, “You asked me to put cantaloup on the cake.”

I said, “No, I asked you to put candles on the cake.”

So this is how she understood my English!

— 26 April 1986

From:Sri Chinmoy,The world-experience-tree-climber, part 5, Agni Press, 1994
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/we_5