“Don’t I Know You?”

Have you ever been mistaken for someone else? You know…some stranger comes up to you and thinks you are like, Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock? This is who I get confused with all the time. I just give out autographs and go on with my shopping at Dollar General.

Truly, this has happened to me a few times in November. Seems some folks think I resemble the gal who oversees the Election Board in my county. Well, she is about 20 years younger than me, so that is a good thing. But you know, I don’t see it. One lady started to state a question about absentee voting. I decided to have a bit of fun with her. I told her that she was certainly welcome to vote absentee ballot; however, she had to have a family member write her a valid excuse note and send it in with her form. Preferably her parents—and she had better not try to forge their signature. As she looked befuddled, I came clean. “No I am not Beth White, and no I have no idea about absentee ballots.” I know. It was a mean thing to do and I just lost your vote. Sorry.

Well, the craziest time was when I was in, you guessed it, Dollar General. I was perusing the pet food aisle when this African American male turns around, looks at me and says: “Hey! How are you? I haven’t seen you at the club in a while. How you been? You are looking good. So…how you been?”

Hmmm. I started to say, ” You had me at hello.” But he didn’t say “hello” he said “hey.” So much for that great movie line. But the next reference he made was to ‘the club’. You may not know me very well, so let me interject that the only club I was a member of was the Monkees Fan Club when I was eleven. Suffice it say, I do not think this gentleman was thinking of that club.

So before I could politely enlighten him on who I was not, I was relishing that “You are looking good” line. Hey…it’s my life and if  it rocked my world, then so be it. About that time, he realized I was not who he thought I was:

“Aren’t you….?”
“Um no.”
“Oh…I’m sorry. You looked jus’ like this gal who used to come to the club.”
“Yeah. I got kicked out of the club. Didn’t wear my Monkees Fan    
   Club pin to the meetings.”
“Huh? Oh well, you sure be having a twin. See you later.”

Great. A club-attending ‘twin’ who attracts strangers in the Dollar store or Chairperson of the Election Board. Yep, this is my life.

Usually I am the one who approaches all sorts of people and most likely I know them and they know me. It is soooo cool to reconnect with former students, their parents, neighbors, etc. I tell them my life story, they tell me what they can in between my taking breaths, and I walk away all smiley and such. And then I hum that song from the eighties, “We are the World….”

My grandson told me last Saturday, after running into folks I had not seen in 25 years, that I just talk to everyone. He’s kinda right.
He went on to say, “Mamaw, one of these days you are going to walk up to somebody and they are going to say: “Yeah, I know you. You shook my hand two years ago and told me a long story.”

I laughed. My children and their children laughed. It’s true. The ‘don’t I know you’ is really my own demon. What can I say? I like people and if I know them, then I want to do the polite thing and retell the last forty years of my life. I talk pretty fast, so I can get from childbirth to retirement rather quickly.

I’ll bet Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock wouldn’t give them that much time.

Well, I’d like to elaborate on this more, but hey…I gots to get to the club. You never know who I might meet there!