The big thing today is to search out who you really are. To find yourself. To become aware of your own identity.
And I, for one, can see the value in all this if only because other people seem to have such a hard time figuring out who I am.
When I was a kid growing up in a large family, my mother would often mistake me for one of her other many children and after trying out a couple of names on me, would finally say in frustration, “Well, whoever you are, go out and get the mail!”
All these years later, the mistaken identity problem has persisted, maybe worsened and I am disturbed to think I may go down in history as The Man Who Was Never Himself.
One day I was walking down a hall in a hospital after visiting there, when a very dignified-looking, middle-aged man who I was soon to learn was a psychiatrist, came up to me and started discussing the diagnosis he’d arrived at for a patient he was treating.
I was just about to suggest electroshock treatments, drug therapy and counselling for the poor, afflicted patient when the doctor paused and began blushing at the realization that he had no idea who I was. He mumbled something about mistaking me for an intern and rushed away in a state of befuddlement.
Several years ago, I received a letter from a woman who, in an emotional account, described how I’d ruined her life and spent a lot of her money along the way. She resolved to live with the shattered life, her letter said, but wouldn’t mind her money back, though it would be little consolation to her considering the diminished state of happiness I’d left her in.
I wrote back, explained truthfully that some other Hagarty, who was unrelated to me and whose whereabouts I did not know, was more probably the one who had done the ruining. (I had met the man a few times – he had a different first name than me – and life ruining seemed to me to fall within the range of activities he was capable of performing.)
I never heard from the poor woman again.
One day I tried unsuccessfully to make a cash withdrawal from my bank and the explanation was offered that my account was overdrawn. “Impossible,” I said, and for once, in a bank, I was right. My weekly paycheques, which were deposited automatically by computer, were ending up in someone else’s account in a bank in another city.
Fortunately, the money was returned without hassle.
One Saturday morning a month ago, I picked up the phone to hear a woman sing and say the following: “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Good morning, darling. How are you today?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, resisting the urge to call her Honey Pie.
“Oh no,” the unfortunate woman said, in horror. “Have I got the wrong number?”
“Yes you do,” I said. “But my birthday’s in January if you want to call me then.” She apologized and hung up. I hope she and darling had a happy birthday.
A couple of months ago, a man came into the office, shook my hand and said, “Keeping your one foot in the furrow, I see.”
“I guess so,” I sighed, in tired resignation. He obviously had me confused with freelance journalist Bob Trotter who writes the farm column One Foot in the Furrow for this newspaper every Saturday.
People so often congratulate me on things I wrote in Bob’s column that I don’t even bother to set them straight any more.
“I really enjoy your column,” a reader said one day when she was in the newsroom. “I especially liked the one where you were chasing that bat all over your house one night.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I think you’re talking about Helen Barker’s column, On My Mind.”
“Yes, maybe you’re right,” she said. “Well, I liked it anyway.”
“Thanks,” I said again and wondered why I was thanking someone for complimenting me on something somebody else wrote.
But the topper happened two weeks ago when a woman I do not know came up to me in a store and started chatting. “I’m fine, thank you,” I said in response to one of her enquiries.
“I see your kids uptown now and then,” she said. “They’re looking great.”
Now, what was I to do? As a single man with no children, the news of my offspring hanging around uptown came as shock. But, I didn’t want to shatter and embarrass the woman.
“Yeah, they’re fine,” I said. Luckily, she didn’t ask me their ages.
I am going to buy a burial plot, erect a tombstone and have all the pertinent information inscribed on it except the date of my demise, as so many forward-thinking people are doing nowadays. That way, the chances of error at the end will be reduced.
Because I don’t want to find myself answering to St. Peter and his boss for the excesses of someone whose life had been more flamboyant than mine.
And, if I end up underneath someone else’s stone, how will my kids know where to bring the flowers they bought uptown?
©1987 Jim Hagarty
