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There’s a new group of people with whom I enjoy interacting: complete strangers.  I don’t mean randomly walking up to people on the street and trying to engage them in conversation; that would be a little creepy and might result in me getting my ass kicked.  Instead, I’m talking about people who accidentally contact me and think I’m someone else.  Surprisingly, I’ve had two such interactions within the past month.  I don’t know if I’m somehow putting something out there to people, but I’m enjoying this new type of interaction and wouldn’t mind it happening again every so often.

The first one I’ll write about came via text message just this past Sunday.  I was in my car, and I got a message from a number I didn’t recognize (though it was pretty close to my own cell phone number): “Hope your okay.  Just need to figure out how much my part of the phone bill is because im strapped for cash, I had to pay 100 $ co-pay at the hospital on sat.  And the bill states that its 270$ and that is supposed to split between 4 of us, no one really told me how much it costs monthly.” I was very confused by this, naturally. First of all, I take the “you’re/your” and “it’s/its” errors pretty seriously, so if it were indeed a friend of mine, s/he was about to be ridiculed hardcore.  Second, who forgets that the dollar sign goes before the number?   Now the big one: I’m pretty sure I would remember if I shared my phone bill with anyone besides my lovely wife.  So I wrote back: “Who is this?”  I think that’s a reasonable question, don’t you?  I suppose I could’ve just ignored it, but I was pretty curious at this point.  What I didn’t expect was this answer: “Shaundra.  Lol. You know your friend who just moved out.”  Oh yeah, I’m the idiot here.  Now in hindsight, I easily could’ve had some fun with this person and played the role of her ex-roommate for a while.  Ya know, something like, “I wuz kidding LOL.  I’ll give you some money.  is 2000 $ enuf to cover u for a while?”  But I didn’t, and instead simply responded with, “Sorry, but you have the wrong number.”  She wrote back rather quickly: “Oh wait you know what I forgot, I am soo sorry for bothering you.”  What did she forget?  That she had put the wrong number in her phone’s address book?  Because if so, that’s the kind of thing one should change as soon as the error is made known.  I wrote back saying it was no problem, and that was that.  Shaundra, if you’re reading this…well that would be really weird, wouldn’t it?

The second stranger encounter happened almost a month ago.  I received an email that was sent to me and two other people who shared my last name.  It was from a woman named Kathy, and she was forwarding a link to an online autism test.  “I got a 6, Bill got a 7, Rick got a 25……….what’s your score?” she wrote.  I’ve gotten a ton of spam in my time, but this was different.  I could tell that it was a personal email just sent to the wrong person.  It’s happened before (and since, come to think of it), so I did the polite thing and wrote back: “Did you mean to send this to someone else? -Peter.”  I wrote my name (sorry if you thought it was actually P-Dawg) because my email address just has my first and middle initials, and I thought that would tip her off that she’d written to the wrong person.  Instead, I got this response: “no – why?  Are you afraid?”  I have to admit, she made me wonder for a split second if I was the idiot here.  I thought, “Wait, do I actually know this Kathy?  Maybe I should just take the quiz and tell her my score.”  Otherwise, the only other logical explanation was that she knew someone with the same first and last name as me  – and same middle initial!  It’s not that uncommon of a name, but those odds seemed unlikely to me.  Also, like with Shaundra, was my email in her address book already or did she manually type it in wrong?  The next email was from Anne, a possible long-lost relative who was on Kathy’s original email: “13. Interesting. Peter…..Melissa…Will?:  Well crap, now Anne wants to know my score too.  Melissa replied to all: “I got an 8. Will won’t take it.”  Kathy wrote back, ” LOl….Will is funny. -K.”  I enjoyed learning so much about these people, but I thought it was time to clear this up once and for all.  “I apologize, but I think you might have the wrong person,” I wrote.  I’m not sure why I apologized or said “might,” except that I was probably letting her down in some way by a) not taking the test and b) not being someone she actually knows.  She replied, “LOl…I’m so sorry.  You’re right.  I am looking for pt***** at a different server.” 

End of story, right?  Well maybe for most people, but I couldn’t let it go quite that easily.  So I wrote back:  “No problem at all – amazing that his name’s also Peter. Now I might go take that test 🙂  -Wrong Peter.”  I thought that was some nice closure to our conversation, but Kathy had other plans: “I’d be curious to know how you do. Just a guess, but I bet your score is on the low side. Mine was 6.”  Oh, so she knows me now, does she?  How could she possibly guess my score?  One thing was for certain: I absolutely had to take it now and email her back.  So I went to her original email and took the brief test.  Then I wrote once more: “My score was 11, so between my new friends Anne and Melissa :)”  I guess I was in a smiley face mood, which is strange for me.  Nevertheless, that was another email that I thought nicely ended our little accidental conversation.  Shockingly (or probably not at this point), my phone buzzed again: “Haha..11 is low! Your new friend Anne wants to know if your middle name is Thomas too.”  “Sorry, I’m afraid we’re different people after all. No Thomas here.”  I almost wrote my actual middle name to her, but then I realized that there’s no reason to give a complete stranger my first, middle, and last name to go along with my email address and supremely important autism test score.  She wrote back one final time: “Oh well, you seem like a friendly guy anyway. Cheers!”  Anyway?  Like that was in question because my middle name isn’t Thomas?  That’s a weird thing to say, Kathy.  I thought I knew you.

So, those are my recent accidental stranger conversations.  Accistrations?  Sure, accistrations.  What gets me about both of them is the amount of indignation sent my way when I nicely pointed out that they may have written me in error.  If someone sent me something saying I might have contacted the wrong person, I’d immediately double- and triple-check everything and then apologize.  But no, they assumed I was forgetful and afraid, respectively.  It all worked out in the end though, as I don’t have autism and I don’t have to split 270 $.

(By the way, I’m not sure if the link still works or not, but here’s the online test.)

Tags: autism, strangers, text messages