This is one of those surreal things that happens occasionally in one’s life.
I turned on the news the other night in the middle of a story about a local murder of a young woman. A sad and lonely death in the stairwell of condo.
The announcer was just reporting that the murderer had been arrested, but all I heard was the last part of his name. A chill ran up my spine as I heard: “…efguy was arrested and charged with the murder of (the victim). Mr. Chefguy is a registered sex offender on the State’s sex offender website.”
Turns out that this guy’s name is very similar to mine; in fact, his last name is pronounced exactly like mine, but spelled slightly differently, and his first name is very similar to mine. For example, his name is Merle Chefgye, and mine is Earl Chefguy.
Visions of SWAT teams rappelling off my roof flashed through my mind. Mistakes of a tragic magnitude have been made in the past by overzealous cops. Even though the guy is now under arrest, I’m still nervous about it.
So the phone rings. Disembodied voice: “murdering motherfucker”. Click.
Rings again, a friend this time: “Man, is that you on the news?” “Er, no, shit-for-brains, if that was me, I would have somehow regressed to age 30, changed my name, and…oh yeah…somehow have escaped from jail and returned to my house so I could answer your stupid question.”
I’m wondering who else on the Board has had a case or near case of mistaken identity.
Mine is nowhere near as serious as yours. I have the same name as a semi-well-known writer. As a teenager, we had AOL in the house; sometimes I had my full name in the name section (I know, I was really bright, there). I also had my age posted. At least once a month, some fan of hers would email me, asking, “Are you thelibwen?” Yeah, the middle-aged British writer is pretending to be a teenager from Kalamazoo.
A former coworker of mine had the same name as a woman who, not far away, barricaded herself in her house and it took the cops to pry her out. I think shots had been involved but the poor woman was more delusional than criminal. She also was the same age and also in a very similar profession to my coworker. So much so that a good friend of the coworker, in another town, on hearing of the ongoing incident, called the police and offered to talk to the barricaded woman, mistaking her for their friend. Very weird to have two such alike sounding people quite close together.
I work across the hallway from the Anchorage trooper dispatch center. One day I walked in to steal candy from the candy dish in dispatch and they all looked at me and said “OMG! The cops are looking for you out in Wasilla!”
Turns out some kid about my age with the EXACT same name, including middle initial, had just robbed a grocery store. They knew it wasn’t me, since it would have taken too long for me to get to work, but they joked about it for a few days.
When I was a sophomore in high school, there was another girl who had the same first name as me, and her last name was almost identical as well - for privacy purposes, let’s say my name was Mary 12345, hers was Mary 23451. We were frequently confused for one another to the point that we got one another’s report cards once. Toward the end of the school year, she was murdered, and many people (for a few minutes, including my MOTHER) thought it was me.
Not the name but the face. When I was 11, I was visiting my sister in some wide-place-in-the-road town in eastern Pennsylvania. One day, the owner of the corner store refused to serve me, saying, “I told you never to come in my store again.” Turned out, he’d caught some other girl shoplifting a day or two earlier, who he claimed looked like me.
My sister and I still love to tell this story, not because of any lingering resentment, but because of what we consider the storekeeper’s folly. “He says, ‘Well, she looked like you.’ What did I look like? I looked like a kid!”
Although, curiously, the encounter actually made me more sure of myself when challenged by authority, rather than less. After that, I didn’t cow to anyone unless they made it clear they meant business. “What’s that sign say?” is a question, not an edict. Years later, when I had just turned 21, I was at a school dance in a hotel. I visited the bar halfway through (the dance itself was alcohol-free), and was told by a chaperone, “You know, this school has a policy regarding underage drinking.”
“Great! If I see an underage person drinking, I’ll tell them that!”
Also, Chefguy, I’m sorry to hear about that first phone call. Although, I must say that was a pretty dumb would-be harrasser. Same thing you told your friend: if you’re that guy, you’re not at home to answer your phone!
LifeOnWry, how did your mom think you were the murder victim? Did the cops call her instead of the other girl’s parents?
As it happened, Rilchiam, the girl’s body was found, and her parents informed while I was spending the night at another friend’s house. It was on the news (which my mother did not see) and a well-meaning friend called my mom to offer condolences.
Trooper dispatch is actually located in the National Guard Armory on Ft Richardson. It used to be located at trooper HQ on Tudor. It was moved so it could be co-located with the State Emergency Coordination Center and the Rescue Coordinatin Center. This was supposed to facilitate coordination during emergencies, but it only really helped during the Miller’s Reach fire.
My first name is uncommon enough that I’ve never had anything like this happen. My brother, however, occassionaly gets harassing calls from collection agencies looking for the deadbeat who has his exact name. Sometimes it takes a lot of convincing that he is in fact, someone else.
I’ve had to have the phone changed to DogDad’s name, because I kept getting harassing calls from bill-collectors, the local hospital, a couple of catalog order houses, and so forth, for non-payment of outstanding bills (for over $30,000). Same first name. Same last name. Different SSN, thank goodness.
I even got her W-2 last year. (Sent it back with an explanation).
THEN I found out from a co-worker that my doppleganger was thrown in the state penitentiary for: check kiting, forgery, and half a dozen other things.
Interesting feeling, having people at work wonder why I’m still there when I’m “supposed to be” in jail.
There’s another guy in Omaha with the exact same name as me. He’s a pediatrician. I regularly get calls from anxious parents at night who are somewhat disappointed that they’ve gotten a nuclear engineer instead of a pediatrician. “Sorry, not too much I can do about that cough; like some spent fuel in your backyard?”
