Month: October 2024

Has an unexpected interstate lawman come a-knockin’ at your door?

Demand they double-check–surely you ain’t the guy they’re looking for…

“Hey, bro, you got some mail from the Baca County Sheriff. Just thought you should know,” my college roommate–the one and only Beautiful Love Muscle (aka BLM)–said as he handed me a legal-sized envelope as I walked in the door.

“Ahh, it’s probably junk mail, asking me to Back The Blue¹For the record, I don’t think ‘Back the Blue’ was a thing back in 2004. or some other non-sense asking me for my hard-earned money,” I replied dismissively.

“Hah! Which local ordinance did you violate this time, you outlaw, you? Wait, you’re not the most wanted man in Kansas (again), are you?” BLM said chuckling.

“Har, har. You’re funny. It’s clearly old-school spam–I’m pretty sure there isn’t even a ‘Baca County’ in Kansas. Frankly, it all sounds made-up to me.”

“Let me see that envelope again,” he said.

After a moment of examining the return address, BLM heartily declared, “Yes, ’tis just as I suspected: this letter was sent from Springfield.”

“Well, I did live there for 5 years. So I guess that makes me the most wanted man in Missouri?”

“Bzzzt! Please try again!”

“Most wanted man in Illinois?”

“Nope.”

“Most wanted man in Massachusetts?”

“My dude, have you even ever been to Massachusetts?”

“So that’s a ‘no’? Dang. Seeing as how there’s 67 Springfields, we might be here a while. Can you just put me out of my misery?”

“Colorado, you dummy! Springfield, Colorado! Come to think of it, doesn’t Baca County border Morton County? Didn’t you once almost burn that whole place down?” BLM said, geo-shaming me.

“Colorado! Oh, that makes more sense. I mean, I guess I was there several months ago, yet I have no idea what the Sheriff there would want with me…maybe they want to give me an Outstanding Citizen award or something?”

“Maybe we should just stop hypothesizing and theorizing and just open the ----- letter, and find out what the hubbub is all about,” BLM suggested.

“FINE,” I said begrudgingly as I tore into the dang thing.

I had to scan the enclosed letter several times, trying to digest what exactly it was trying to communicate.

“Well, so is it junk mail or not? Don’t keep me in suspense!” he said excitedly.

“It’s…it’s…it’s a warrant for my arrest.”

“Huh?!?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Says here I wrote a hot check for $200 to Tempel Grain of Lamar. What the hell? I’ve never wrote any checks in Lamar in my life!”

Just then something else fell out of the envelope. BLM picked it up and glanced over it.

“Sorry, bro, but they literally brought the proverbial receipts. This looks like one of your checks from your bank back in Rolla,” he observed.

“Let me see that!” I snatched the check out of from between his sausage fingers.

It didn’t take me more than a split-second of inspecting the signature on what was very much my check to figure out what shenanigans were afoot.

“DADnabbit! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you with my checkbook,” I muttered.

“Trusted who?” BLM inquired.

I let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m not going to name any names, but let’s just say that there’s a certain family member who could technically claim to have the same name as me. Now, before you go making assumptions, let me remind you that there are an abnormally high number of such suspects in my family–remember: even I don’t get to use my own name.”

“Anyways,” I continued, “this person–who shall remain unnamed–had some very specific banking needs, and conveniently for them, my hometown banking account could meet those needs nicely…”

“Let me guess: it was your–” BLM interjected.

“BOBdammit!” I cut him off. “I think you should Just stop while you’re ahead–AND, no, I will not confirm whethER or not I’m their nephew, cousin, or SON, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Well, that was suspiciously odd way of phrasing that. But, my bad, my bad. Please, do go on…” he said.

“Well, anyways, their business happens to be in the middle of bankruptcy procedeedings, and so the arbitrator has his eagle-eye trained on all of their financial assets and accounts. Now, since this anonymous person and I basically have the same name, they got the grand idea of using my account–which the arbitrator has no idea even exists–for some, uh, ‘parallel bookkeeping’.”

“Interesting…way too many boring details, but overall interesting nonetheless…”

“Interesting indeed…well, I wasn’t using the account anyways, and they would be depositing their own funds in the account instead of using mine, so I said ‘What the hell? Why not help them out with some light money laundering?’ I should have known better, though…it would only be a matter of time before they started writing checks that I couldn’t cash.”

BLM sat there pensively for a few moments.

“Well, that does make sense…sure does explain a thing or two…”

“Wait, what? What makes sense?” I asked suspiciously. “Out with it! What secret are you keeping?!?”

“So…uh…I forgot to tell you that you got another piece of mail a few weeks ago…” he said sheepishly. “…it was from the Morton County Sheriff…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, where is it?”

BLM disappeared into our shared bedroom and shuffled through some papers on our shared desk.

“Found it!” he said excitedly.

“Dammit, man, this isn’t a ----- Easter Egg hunt, you knucklehead!” I said, clearly much less excited than he was. “Let me see that!”

And so, for the second time that day I found myself tearing into a legal communique from an officer of the law.

I scanned this new letter, not nearly as surprised as I was last time, though.

“Well, at least it’s not actually a warrant for my arrest.”

“That’s good…” BLM commented, attempting to match my mood–though he was clearly enjoying the schadenfreude of the moment a bit too much.

“Yeah, I suppose so. But it looks like I owe Bultman’s Farm Supply $300 plus a $25 returned check fee.”

“Well, good thing you’re no longer unemploy–” BLM started before I cut him off with a piercing glance.

“Look on the bright side,” he said, this time trying to cheer me up. “It looks like you’re the most wanted man in Kansas after all…”

The point of the story is, believe it or not, this is my little weird-ass way of celebrating Dia de Los Muertos. I’m still trying to get over the unexpected passing of BLM less than a month ago, so I thought it would be nice to write him into one of my semi-historically accurate narratives about identity theft.

Fun fact, though: when researching this story, I came across the actual receipt of when I had sent the money to Baca County to cover the first hot check, and it turns out that at the time, I hadn’t lived with BLM for 4 months. So…I guess this is some form of reverse-identity theft? You know, where I’ve attributed entire conversations to him that clearly must have been with another friend or roommate of mine…anyways, I digress.

But let’s also not forget about my beloved family member who apparently had no problem with dragging my (our?) good name through the mud, as they too are no longer with us. Despite their deviltry, rascality, and roguery,²Yes, I did indeed just Google ‘shenanigans synonyms’. I still love them and miss them very much. And thanks to my 6-year-old daughter learning about Dia de Los Muertos at school and insisting on celebrating, this will be the first year that we properly celebrate the life of that beloved old fart-knocker.

Oh, and also, one practical point of the story: now you know why I absolutely detest the idea of naming one’s child so closely after another family member and/or one’s self. Turns out, these hot checks were just the tip of the ol’ same-name iceberg…you wouldn’t believe how long and hard I had to tussle with the credit score people to convince them that it wasn’t me who had gone and racked up a shit-ton of debt before my 22nd birthday.

Anyways, happy Dia de Los Muertos, y’all…

Content created on: 29/30 October 2024 (Tues/Weds)