Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Case Of The Mistaken Identity

My longtime reader may remember me mentioning, a few days ago, a little incident with something called Facebook that had one of my classmates from high school, Karen, trying to figure out who I was.

Karen went through so many initials trying to narrow it down. Then she finally got to my correct initials. Six of us had the same initials. One by one Karen picked the wrong name. At one point she eliminated me and another "D" and said she'd finally figured it out. That I was the guy you see in the photo.

Yikes! I thought. That guy in the photo was a nice guy. But a real doofus.

At this point in time I was thinking to myself that either my appearance has changed drastically or that Karen has met so many people through the years that some, like me, have fallen out of her memory.

Now, to be fair about it, I'll admit that that picture that I use at the top of my blog doesn't look all that much like me. I was down at Enchanted Rock State Park, it was February, windy and very cold when I snapped that picture with my very old Casio digital camera that cost an appalling, now to look back on it, $599. That camera was bought back in the last century, so you can imagine how low wattage resolution wise it was.

When Karen was making all those guesses as to who I was, I assumed, in addition to the Enchanted Rock photo, she'd also seen the slide show that runs on the right side column of this blog. But she hadn't.

Karen returned yesterday, well-rested, from 3 days in Seattle, and last night realized she'd misread one of my earlier replies, then looked at the blog again, then saw the slide show, then recognized me.

Karen said her next guess would have been David Sutton. I doubt Karen would remember this, but at our 5 year class reunion a guy named Ray was lamenting about how when he first came to our school, in grade school, he was picked on and nicknamed "Nipples." Karen overheard part of this and thought it was I Ray was complaining about. Karen began to sort of chastise me for my bad behavior when Ray told her, "No, he was the only one who stuck up for me." To which I said, "Yeah, it was that weasel, David Sutton who called him Nipples."

I wonder what became of David Sutton? I saw him once, in the late 70s or 80s at this disco called Duffy's. He sat with our group and was being all Mr. Friendly. I think he was talking about being in the army. After about 10 minutes I told him to go sit somewhere else.

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