Month: December 2024

This is a warning to any kiddie-stalkers that look oddly like my friend, my dude:

You keep following those girls, and I swear I’ll end you…

“What’s up, dude?”

Little did I know just how close those three little words would come to unwittingly destroying several lives.

I had just come out of the local bookstore on the edge of our quaint little downtown, and stepped into a quagmire of foot traffic–people here, there, everywhere! It was our town’s annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony and other related festivities, and residents of all ages were enjoying holiday music courtesy of a various junior high bands, hot chocolate and other baked goods, visits to Santa, and all other assorted types of merriment.

Given the tidy crowd that had come out on this fine November afternoon, I wasn’t surprised when I saw three pre-teen girls from my kids’ school traipsing merrily past me.

And I was utterly delighted when just a few steps behind them was a blonde ponytail I’d recognize anywhere. ‘Twas none other than Adam, father of one of the girls–who we’ll call ‘L’–and one of my closer #DadFriends from the school!

He seemed to be intently watching the girls, and didn’t notice me coming out of the bookstore, so to get his attention, I uttered those three fateful words…

“What’s up, dude?”

As he turned towards me, I could tell Adam seemed a little surprised to hear someone whispering in his ear.

But by the time he had finally turned all the way around and determined that I was the one calling him ‘dude’, it was my turn to be even more surprised–it wasn’t Adam at all!

Admittedly, I was a little embarrassed, but c’mon! I swear the guy looked just like Adam from the side, plus I know for sure that had been his daughter passing by only moments earlier.

“Uh, oh, sorry man. I thought you were someone else,” I stammered.

Fortunately, Not-Adam was pretty cool about it.

“Oh, hah! It’s all good–no worries!” he said barely breaking pace to engage with me.

“Heh-heh…yeah, you totally looked like another guy I know. Again, my apologies,” I said, trying not to be too awkward about it.

I was headed in the same direction as Not-Adam, so I attempted to walk alongside him as we shared a little laugh over the case of mistaken identity.

“It’s funny, y’know?” he said as he barely took his eyes off something or someone just ahead of us. “I just thought you were talking on your Bluetooth or something.”

“Is that so?” I said, quickening my pace just to keep up with the guy.

“Yeah, you could have played the whole thing off like you were talking on the phone and I would have never been none the wiser,” he said, now very clearly distracted from our conversation.

He seemed to sense that I could tell his focus was elsewhere.

“Oh, sorry, I’m trying to keep an eye on those girls up there.”

What. The. ----- Dude? He’s just openly copping to being a creep?

“Come again?” I said, still taken aback by his brazen admission.

“Yeah, I can’t let them out of my sight. That’s my daughter and her two friends.”

I just kinda stared at him in disbelief. Was I taking crazy pills?!? This guy looked a lot like Adam, and now he’s claiming to be L’s dad–i.e. Adam? Had I slipped into a parallel timeline? What the hell was going on here???

“Oh. Is that so?” I said, trying to suss out what his deal was.

Either this guy was a grown up Changeling¹Check out this Wikipedia article if you don’t know what a changeling is. Adam, or I just happened to stumble upon his Doppelgänger²Check out this Wikipedia article if you don’t know what a Doppelgänger is.…who–fun fact–turned out to be a pedophile (or ‘kiddie-fiddler’ for you Brits in the audience).

“Sorry, gotta run! Later, ‘dude’!” he said before suspiciously skittering in the direction of this 3 underage targets…

“You’re not her real dad, you sicko!”

I knew that I any pedo worth his grit would have said something like “uh, yeah, that pre-pubescent girl I’m following is…uh…she’s…uh…she’s my daughter! Yeah, she’s my daughter!”

This wasn’t the first time that some creep had been following around young girls in our beloved small-town downtown, but I wasn’t going to let this Not-Adam get away with it a second time!

A quick phone call to the proper authorities, and it was only a few minutes later before I was leading the local cops through the crowd trying to locate that pervert before he could get to his victims. And now, here we were with him pinned to the ground with his arms behind his back, cops swarming all over him like ants on rice, and me, with my righteous anger calling him out on his lies and deception.

“Hey! What’s going on here?” the sex offender protested. “I am too her real dad!”

“Officers, this man was about to violently attack 3 young girls in a dark alleyway, had it not been for my quick thinking and your heroic actions.”

“What are you even talking about? You are ----- insane, man!”

I must say, this guy was putting on an Oscar-worthy performance.

“Gentlemen of the law, this man was claiming to be the father of one of these girls–“

“Which I AM!” Chester the Molester interjected.

“I know her father–our kids are in the same class together–and while he even went to the great lengths of putting on a prosthetic rubber mask and ponytail wig to even look like him–he almost had even me fooled–I assure you: this man is an imposter!”

I had since given up on my highly implausible and rather ridiculous theories of a supernatural origin of Not-Adam, and was now presenting to law enforcement an explanation that was much more within the realm of reason.

“I swear to g0d, if you don’t get off me and let me go right now, I’ll sue the PBO police department into oblivion, along with this ----- delusional nut case,” the Kiddie-Fiddler-on-the-Roof seethed, gesturing at me.

“Officers of the court, if it pleases you, I will now reveal the true identity of this child predator!” I said grandiosely, firmly grasping the perv’s fake hair.

“This man in no Adam! Watch as I pull off his mask and reveal his true identity!”

“Sir, I don’t recom–” one of officer said, lunging in vain to stop me.

“Wait, who’s Ad–OWWWWWW!” the criminal yelped in agony at my first failed attempt to remove the wig and mask.

“Oh, you cheeky bastard, you’re real good. You must be using the facial glue that the Hollywood pros do. But it won’t stand up to my second attempt!” I proclaimed to the gathering crowd that included Santa and at least one elf, as I placed both hands this time on those almost-convincingly-real locks of the perp.

“Sir! Please don’t–” another officer said as he unwisely tried to intervene.

“SWEET BABY JEEEEEEEEEEEZUS! That ----- hurt. Somebody, please! Stop this madman before he rips out all my beautiful hair!” he cried.

The mask hadn’t come off just yet, but undeterred, I knew I was closer than ever to exposing this degenerate like I was Chris Hansen.

“Don’t be fooled, folks! Third time’s a–“

“DAD?!?”

One of the girls bust through the crowd.

“Don’t fall for it kid! This isn’t your dad–this is a fake Adam!” I said, guiding her away from the deception that abounded.

“Wait…who’s Adam?” she said.

“Wait…you’re not L…” I said.

“He’s my dad!” L said, gasping as she stumbled through a gap in the crowd behind the other girl.

“That’s what he’d like you to believe! But despite the impressive prosthetics and other fakery, trust me, Young Grasshopper, this guy ain’t your real dad!”

“No sh*t, Sherlock,” the mystery girl said. “He’s MY dad!”

“FOR F*CK’S SAKE!” cursed the Fake Adam on the ground. “Somebody tell me who Adam is???”

“Definitely not you, chump!” I said.

“And…?” YouLookLikeAnAdam said, waiting me to say something else.

“Wait…what? You’ve finally given up on claiming to be Adam?” I said after a beat.

“Hey, I never once said I was this mythical Adam! And frankly, the guy sounds made up to me…”

“He’s my dad!” L repeated herself.

“No, poor confused child, this man is not your dad!”

Dang, he really did have her fooled.

“Because he’s my dad!”

Now the other girl was repeating herself!

“Sweet girl, don’t confuse your pretty little head over this. We all know that Adam is not your dad,” I slightly condescended.

“Would somebody please listen to my daughter?!?” the guy moaned.

“Look, Buster, we all know that L isn’t really your daughter, so stop calling her that! We see right through your charade!”

“Huh?” L said. “Please leave me out of this hot mess.”

“Huh?” I said.

“He was talking about me, you ass-hat,” the other girl sassed.

“What?” Now my pretty little head was getting confused. “Who’s the ‘he’ you’re referring to? Adam?”

“What? No. Adam is her dad,” she said gesturing to L. “Why is my dad pinned to the ground by a police officer.”

“But I told you he’s an impost–“

I stopped short.

“Wait. What?”

“Sir,” the most imposing of the officers–the one who had been pinning the guy to the ground–now got up and turned his attention towards…me?

“We’re going to have to take you down to the station,” he continued. “Make false accusations of molestation and assaulting another man’s hair are serious offenses that you’ll need to answer to.”

“What? No! I did nothing wrong!” I protested, even as it slowly dawned on my dumb ass that maybe–just maybe–I was the one who had been confused this whole time.

“Sir…” the officer looked at me over the top his glasses and down his nose at me, a look that said, “We both know you’re full of shit.”

“So…what you’re saying is that there is no mask? No wig? No Scooby-Doo heroics to be had?”

“You’re free to go, Sir,” the officer said–but not to me.

“Just call me Lloyd…Lloyd P. Fletcher. And like I told you I’m her dad,” he said, glaring at me while gesturing to the other girl.

“Um…” was all I could muster, as I slowly died of embarrassment.

“Nice to meet you, asshole…”

So…fun fact: this story was pretty accurate, at least up until the police allegedly got involved.

Except, ’twas I that got mistaken for Adam, and not the other way around.

Let me tell you that side of the story:

So I show up to this whole tree-lighting thing with my daughter, who we’ll call ‘A’. A bunch of her old classmates from last year who are in junior high this year were selling baked goods at a booth, so we had to immediately make a bee-line for them.

Now, enter the third girl, who we’ll call ‘L.L. Bean’ just for the hell of it. L.L. is my baby’s bestie, and we know each other pretty well since she be hanging out at our house a lot and vice versa.

L.L. and her family had just got back from a trip overseas just a day or two before, so her overprotective parents were too jet-lagged to join her at the event, but dropped her off on her own on the condition that she have a trusted adult around at all times. Originally, the trusted adults were the teachers and other parents running the booth.

Seeing an opportunity for a bit of freedom to roam, L.L. explained her situation to me, and asked if I would be willing to tail her and A while they bantered about downtown.

Being a good father and friend-father, I agreed, and off we went: L.L., A. and me–and L.

And it was about halfway through their little adventure was when I heard out of nowhere:

“What’s up, dude?”

Anyways, you already know approximately the conversation we had–though I didn’t explicitly say I was following my daughter and her friends…which might have been even creepier in that situation.

A little while later, we passed L’s mom, whom I had met once a few weeks earlier when she picked up L. from our house. And talking to L’s mom was…this complete stranger who had mistaken me for somebody he knew.

I waved hi as we passed, and then immediately caught up with L.

“Hey, um…who’s that guy talking to your mom?”

“Oh, that was James, Paddriac’s dad,” she replied.

Ahh, ‘Paddriac’–not his real name, because his real name is my fake middle name, one of the most tightly guarded secrets in America–a kid a year or two older than my daughter A., a year older than L.L., and the same age as L.

I thought it was humorous that we kinda almost knew each other after all.

Later on, once L.L.’s dad showed up and I was free of my babysitting responsibilities, I doubled back and introduced myself to him and reintroduced myself to L.’s mom.

“Yeah, he kinda looks a lot like Adam, right?” he commented to her (almost as if I wasn’t even there).

She thoughtfully looked at me from several different angles before concurring, “yeah, especially from this back angle, I could see how even I might think it was Adam.”

“Um…so who’s Adam?” I said, apparently the only one of the three of us not intimately familiar with my Doppelgänger.

“My husband–L.’s dad,” she said.

“Oh. Cool,” was about all I had to comment on this new information that could potentially lead to future awkward situations…like, she’s essentially seen me naked. And…uh…other naked-type things. You know…awkward.

I did later confirm with my wife, who had met Adam once, that I did indeed look a helluva lot like him. Now…come to think of it…by my logic, she’s essentially seen him naked as well…

But I digress.

It didn’t occur to me until later how this James fella was probably hella confused by the early situation…and thus, Part Two of this story was born, as I tried to imagine what it was like to be in his shoes during the encounter, which as we all know by now, got well out of hand.

At least it did in my head…

Content created on: 20/21 December 2024 (Fri/Sat)

They have origin stories! They have alter-egos! But if I got an origin story for my alter-ego?

That just might make me a super super-hero…

“For the last time, lady,” I fiercely typed, “tell your country club friends that, no, I’m not that Lloyd Fletcher; no, I’m not your husband; and no, I do not want play tennis with them!”

I had tried to kindly address the situation before, but alas, I still received regular emails imploring ‘Bud’–apparently this other Lloyd Fletcher’s nickname–to join them for a friendly round of doubles tennis.

The situation had become so comically ridiculous that, given my druthers, I would have shown up at ‘The Club’, racket in hand, and upon seeing them (not that I would have known what Bud’s buddies looked like), curtsied and declared, “‘Tis I, the noble and beloved Lloyd Fletcher!”

The only problem was that ‘The Club’ appeared to be somewhere in Anchorage, Alaska, while I was off yonder in North Carolina. ‘Twas a real bummer, too, because that would have been pretty ----- funny.

Actually, though, my life had been intertwined with Bud’s long before I moved to North Carolina. According to my records, I first became aware of doppel-namer¹That’s like a doppelganger, but with names. back in 2004 when I received an Alaskan Airlines/Horizon Air ticket confirmation for one Lloyd Fletcher. The fact that it was a round trip between Anchorage and Kotzebue (also in Alaska), was my first clue that email just may not have been intended for me.

Later on, I would be involved in a whole email thread about terraforming lagoons in Palembang…which I deduced from contextual clues in the email was located somewhere in Indonesia, and that Bud and his wife were going to be visiting soon (though he really wanted to be based in Singapore, if possible, on account of her desire for leisure and not malaria).

I ultimately figured out that the hilarious mix-up was the result of us both using variations of ‘Lloyd Fletcher’ in our email addresses: mine was lloydfletcher@hotmail.com,²I would to go ahead preemptively apologise if there actually is a Lloyd Fletcher somewhere out there using my fake real email address. You know…since I’m not even the real fake Lloyd Fletcher, and that is just an alias for our purposes here, in order to protect my fake identity. and his was lloyd_fletcher@hotmail.com. Did you catch that? Bud had an underscore between his first and last name in his email address–which I’m sure was a real pain in the ass whenever he had to give it out: “…now, it’s very important that you include the underscore–otherwise your emails will go to some yahoo in the Lower 48 with the same name…”

What I never had the heart to tell him was that–fun fact–we don’t actually have the same name…

“Have you heard about this new email service that’s totally free?!?” Phillip K. Ballz–my high school bestie–enthused. “We can be the first kids in town to have our very own Hotmail–what a cool name, right?!?–accounts. We’re going to be so cool!”

“Totes magotes, my dude, let’s do it! But what names should we pick? My name is way too common, and it looks like I would have to add ’69’ or something like that since almost every other variation is already somehow taken.”

Honestly, I didn’t expect ol’ PKB to be of any help in picking out a name. You should have seen how long it took us to settle on a name for our little garage grunge band that we had formed a year earlier in ’96 (that’s the year 1996, for you kids at home wondering what such a big number like that means). But, you know what, my favorite dipshit surprised me this time.

“How about you use your alter-ego? Now that would be cool!” he suggested.

“Oh, you mean ol’ ‘Lloyd P. Fletcher’? Hah! I had forgot about him!”

Back when I was a bored freshman–now that would have been in late ’95 or early ’96–I had got my hands on an ID holder, and decided that I needed to make myself a very crude fake ID. Of course, the best part of constructing a fake ID is getting to conjure up a fake name.

Taking inspiration from a well-known grunge band that I idolized, I borrowed the first name from one of their lesser-known songs, ‘Lloyd’. Of course that’s not my real fake first name–if I used my actual fake name, then everybody in the world would have my email address. And I take the privacy of somebody who I completely made up very seriously.

Anyways, another fun fact is that ‘Lloyd’ is actually reference to a secondary character from a very, very famous feel-good TV show from the 60’s. I’m not going to name any names–no real names anyways–but let’s just say it was so feel-good that the theme song may or may not include the most well-recognized whistling Americana has every produced.

Oh, and a not-so-fun-fact is that this song–the one that inspired me so much that I would name my alter-ego after it–was actually about some very, very dark subject matter. I believe it implied that this particular Lloyd belonged on a registry that may or may not be bridal in nature. (Spoiler alert: it’s not that kind of registry.) Further, this song implied that some of the most beloved characters from this show were complicit in such utterly ----- -up behavior.

So…yeah, that’s where my fake first name came from.

Now as for the mystique-laden ‘P.’, that intriguing middle initial. It actually does stand for something…unlike that prick Harry S. Truman–the S stands for nothing! Nothing at all! No, not my P. though–it’s a very funny-to-say-and-I-wonder-who-the-hell-would-ever-name-their-kid-that kind of name, which may or may not be found in a certain holy scripture. Fun fact, though, someone in our vicinity was ‘the hell’ that named their kid this, as a member of our rival small-town (which may or may not share the same name as a very well-known Russian city) football team had this name. And it made me snicker every time I heard it…

I think I may have digressed here a bit…where was I? Oh, yeah, I waxing poetic about the P.–which, again, I need to reiterate, is not my real fake middle initial. Anyways, the true fake identity of The P. was such a well-guarded secret that knowing it meant that you were in the inner-most innerds of my inner circle of trust. If I had told you the true meaning of The P., I was telling you a secret that I expected you to take to your grave. In fact, up until the point I was married, I believe that there were maybe 3 or 4 people who actually knew what The P. stood for…including my wife. Naturally, it was also my Hotmail password up until at least Y2K.

Lastly, I needed a fairly pretentious last name to go with ‘Lloyd P.’ The feel I was really going for–and why I insisted my fake self had a middle initial that lent itself to a certain nominal cadence–was inspired by the sheriff from The Dukes of Hazzard, Roscoe P. Coltrane.

Wait a second, that doesn’t sound quite pretentious enough…

*checks notes*

Ahh, right, I got my lawmen with prominent middle initials from 1970’s pop culture mixed up. Who I was actually thinking of all those decades ago when putting together my nom de plume was the sheriff from Smokey And The Bandit, Sheriff Buford T. Justice–that’s the guy. If I recall correctly, my dude was a huge pompous a**hole, always harruffing about, making sure that everyone included his middle initial when referring to him.

Say, if you’re in need of short break, why don’t you take a moment and enjoy this montage I found, the Best of Buford T. Justice:

Okay, so I was saying I needing a good fake last name to make me sound legit. For unknown reasons, I found what I was looking for in the Funnies Page of my beloved regional newspaper. I happened to remember a bit of trivia about the last name of well-known cartoon rascal of about 7 years in age, and thought ‘Fletcher’ would perfectly complete my alter-ego’s name. And again, Fletcher is not my real fake last name. It’s my fake name’s fake last name.

So there you have it: you were essentially in the room when Lloyd P. Fletcher was brought forth into this world. Of course, he wasn’t meant to live beyond the laminated walls of my Morton County Community College security badge.

But then I made the rookie mistake that every almost-17 -year-old makes: I thought it would be a fantastic idea to immortalize Lloyd by claiming the address lloydfletcher@hotmail.com.

And I can’t stop laughing every time I think about Bud, the real ‘Lloyd Fletcher’ (not his real name either–I have to protect the privacy of those who have the misfortune of sharing a name with ‘me’!). I bet when he went to sign up for his Hotmail account, he thought he was such a unique snowflake: “This will be easy, since I’m basically the only Lloyd Fletcher on this plan–whaaaah?!? How can this be? There’s another Lloyd Fletcher, and just my luck, he beat me to the Hotmail punch!”

“Fear not!” the real Lloyd Fletcher indubitably thought. “I’ll just throw an underscore in there–what could possibly go wrong???”

Well, I’ll tell you what could go wrong Lloyd: you have no idea how many tennis matches your wife Gaye shows up to but your clueless ass is nowhere to be seen! And you remember Palembang? Well, that trip almost didn’t happen because at one point I was pretty sure I was going to have to get on a plane and go build treatment lagoons in your stead. Why the hell do I know so much about lagoons in third-world countries anyways?!?

Now one might accuse me of proverbially acting like David in the Bible, and ‘Lloyd Fletcher’ my Bathsheba. Have I lustily and greedily taken yet another name for myself, leaving Uriah the Hittite (the real Lloyd Fletcher in this case) high and dry? No! You can’t complain that I came and ‘stole your name’–you weren’t even using it in the first place, Buddy Boy…

“Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Fletcher!”

Sure, it was nice to have a close associate celebrate me finding the love of my life and marrying her in short order. But you would think that ‘Oliver’–not his real name, but his real middle name–would at least know the difference between my true identity and my fake one. He’s seen my legal name on my mail, for fuck’s sake!

*sigh*

You know you’ve taken the Lloyd P. Fletcher joke too far when your own dang roommate thinks your real name is the made up one! I mean, I had been living with this guy for 4 months before I got married. Well, on the bright side, we can at least thank the Lordy Jesús I didn’t have him give the toast at our wedding. That would have been awkward…

“Dear Lloyd Fletcher,” the email read, “the results of your unemployment claims are ready for your viewing. Please log into the Ministry of Labour’s website for further instructions.”

“Oh, great!” I muttered to myself and the computer screen. “This is just what I needed–now I’m being mistaken for some British degenerate who apparently can’t keep a job.”

Yes, it’s true…thanks to yet another real ‘Lloyd Fletcher’ trying to claiming the lloydfletcher@hotmail.com email address, I have discovered my international doppel-namer…has bad credit (in addition to indubitably having bad teeth, #There AreNoRealDentistsInBritian). And I also constantly get notifications from his bank in the UK that his monthly statements are ready. I would be lying if I didn’t say that on at least one occasion, I may or may not have been tempted to try to reset the password so I could log in and a take a peek at this chump’s finances. I mean, I feel like I have a right to know if this guy is dragging my good fake name through the mud…

“Look, it was a mistake I made when I was 17, okay? I just can’t seem to get this guy out of my life!”

That is a phrase I’ve had to, with much embarrassment, share with a stranger way too many times, in hopes of convincing them that I’m not a CraigsList con artist trying to sell them some concert tickets that don’t actually exist.

At one point in my early 30s, I had resolved to change my email address to something that more accurately reflected my legal name. Turns out, that is almost impossible to do after only really having one email address your entire digital life. That ----- Lloyd P. Fletcher is just ingrained into my life…we’re so intertwined that it’s become difficult to tell us apart. The dude haunts me.

And the confusion is not limited to complete strangers–it has extended to people I need to have a personal or professional relationship with. For example, when I tried to get some important information from one of the guys in my neighborhood on the HOA board.

Here are actual excerpts from the email exchange we had:

“Hi Lloyd,
Thanks for sharing information with BJ³Yes, this is my real nickname, but not my real name, lol. about our management company transition.  Here are my comments to BJ, FYI.  My belief is the transition will be clear soon for all.
Kindest Regards,
Don”

This email was clearly a forward of an email that he had sent me through our neighborhood listserv, at which point it occurred to me: “Dear Lord, he thinks that we’re 2 separate people, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or Bruce Wayne and Batman!”

Poor guy, I had to set him straight before things got to the point of awkwardness that I would have to some Seinfeldian shenanigans where I would have to fake my own fake death. Thus, my reply:

“Hi Donald,

I really appreciate you reaching out with this information.

To clear up the BJ/Lloyd issue: I am both BJ and Lloyd…well, not either really. My legal name is [REDACTED] but I’ve gone by ‘BJ’ my whole life. “Lloyd Fletcher” was an alter-ego I made up in high school for the fun of it, and then I ended up using that when I set up my very first email account. Because that’s what short-sighed 16-year-olds did back in 1997, apparently.

…and the confusion has propagated ever since. I even had a roommate in grad school who, after living with me for 4 months, was SHOCKED to find out that my last name was Henderton [note: not my real last name], and NOT Fletcher [also note: not my real fake last name]. Oh, man, that makes me chuckle every time it comes back up!

Thanks so much,

–BJ/Lloyd…”

The point of the story is that maybe you should think twice before creating an alter-ego out of thin air. Maintaining such a lie for the rest of your life can be exhausting–and if you’re not careful, it just might end up on your tombstone instead of your real name!

And what just may be the worst part about engaging in such identity fraud is when you want to tell your story to the world, but you realize that exposing your fake identity is essentially exposing your real identity–after all, these days are we not much more than the sum total of our preferred email address and our phone number?–and so you’re forced to triple-down on your lie and create a fake name for your fake name. Not only is this a confusing lie that’s hard to keep straight, but now in addition to the other 2 real ‘Lloyd Fletchers’ in this world whose digital lives your lies have ruined, you’ve drawn a completely innocent cohort of real-for-real Lloyd Fletcher’s into your global web of deceit…

Content created on: 6/8 December 2024 (Fri/Sun)