Prestigious? Accomplished? Beloved? I’m not gonna lie: you’ve got the wrong guy.
Wait, what’s that? There’s money in it? K, maybe I’ll lie…
“Dear Taimi and Hubert,1As I will explicitly state in 2 seconds, that’s not my real name. Thank you, so very much, for your continued support of WUNC as a Sustainer…”
A few years ago, this email showed up in my inbox (or should I say Lloyd P. Fletcher’s inbox?). At first I thought I was looking at just another quick notel from our local NPR radio station, thanking us for the meager support we throw their way every month. Nothing seemed out of sorts…at first. Now, before you can loudly point out the obvious, let me be clear: it was addressed to my actual first name, not “Hubert”–a name I just made up to protect my precious privacy. Nay, what caught my attention was the other name: ‘Taimi’.
Like, is that even a real name? Frankly, it sounds made up to me. Or maybe somebody had a stroke as they were trying to enter in the name of My Beautiful Bride? Though her name is nothing at all close to that, so that theory quickly got set aside.
So, why the hell was my good name associated with this Taimi character? I was just too curious, so of course I took to the Googles to see what I could unearth on this fraud.
I typed in ‘Taimi Henderson’–not my real last name, of course–and the first result that popped up was from the Smithsonian Archives. Whoever she was, this Taimi has won the Girl’s division of the 1956 National Science Fair. I was already intrigued; now I was also impressed. I mean anybody who can show up and show out at a science fair competition–on any level–has already earned my respect. Of all my accomplishments, that was for sure one thing I never could quite nail (if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, you can get caught up here) .
Moving on to the second result, I clicked on a link to the NC Modernist’s website. Turns out, a local home that has a bit of historical modern architecture is named after Taimi…and Hubert Henderson–wha?!? There’s a house named after me?? Again, it was under my real name, not that fake chump, Hubert Henderson’s.
“Wait just a tick!” I said to myself. “That house was built in 1973! I was negative 7 years old that year–there’s no way that house could be named after me!”
A sat for moment, absorbing the always-obvious fact that Taimi was probably married to some other dope that happened to share the name “Hubert Henderson” with me.
And then I felt incredibly stupid, when I realized that this wasn’t the first–or even second!–time that I had been mistaken for the wrong Hubert Henderson. Or, I probably should use our proper common name: Dr. Hubert Henderson…
“Hi Tiajuana,2Not her real name. Thank you so much for your help! I’m trying to determine if Dr. Henderson still uses 681-xxxx. If this number is no longer needed, then I can delete the menu entry under General Surgery and reclaim it?”
I quickly glanced at the email that had been forwarded to me by Tiajuana, the administrative person for my lab at Puke University/Puke Hospital–not it’s real name, of course, as we need to protect the identity of the my place of work which happens to be begrudgingly associated with a certain college basketball team that makes me want to, well, puke…oh, sorry for the minor digression.
I didn’t give the email much thought, because as is with most things in my life, my work phone number situation wasn’t exactly straight-forward. It didn’t help that I almost never used my work phone, so I didn’t really keep track of it. It didn’t help that where I actually sat my scientific ass on the days I went into work was in a completely different building than where the office where my work computer was. Since all the co-workers that I ever needed to interact with were in the Murine MRI department, I would squat at whatever Apple computer I could find and remotely use my work computer, which hung out with the Human MRI people in a building up the hill.
So, I was tasked of finding out where this mystery phone number rang to, and if I still needed it for any reason at all. I could first eliminate my current physical workspace, since 1) there was no reason why any of those numbers should have been officially assigned to me, and 2) a quick round of peeking at all the landlines in my current and surrounding cubicles confirmed that none of them even shared the 681- prefix.
Maybe it was the phone in my office where my computer was? Now, I have to explicitly state “where my computer was”, because–you guessed it–that wasn’t officially my office either. When my supervisor started working with human subjects, and thus became a part of the Human MRI department, they naturally gave her her own office…one that she had no real use for since she already had her own well-established office amongst the mice and rats.
Originally, my official office was a shared workspace for post-docs (one of which I was no longer at that point, interestingly enough–I had ‘graduated’ to Research Scholar), but for some reason the local IT peoples had put a worthless Windows computer at my desk, so of course I was never there because all the real work had to be done on an Apple. And also, when my supervisor pretty much gifted me her unused office, I relocated my operations to that private location in which I could take a power nap under the desk if I so needed it.
All that to say, I’m pretty sure I had officially added the phone number for one of those two locales to my official work email signature.
*Checks notes*
Nope! That was a 684-prefix, and come to think of it, I don’t think I ever had phone at my officially assigned work space. How the hell was this enigmatic phone number ever associated with my good name?!?
It was at this point that I actually went back and read the email carefully.
“Oh…right. Department of Surgery,” I noted to myself. “I think I’m in the Department of Radiology–though my place in the organizational hierarchy chart has always been really ----- confusing ever since entering the field of MRI.”
I pondered the situation for a moment, double-checking my grasp on reality.
“Okay, I may not know for sure if I work for the School of Medicine or the Department of Radiology or who-knows-what department here in the Puke University Health System, but I do know that I’m not in the Department of Surgery.”
“Wait just a tick!” I said aloud. “I’ve just gone down this asinine rabbit hole, chasing my rabbit tail trying to figure out all the phone numbers associated with my good name, and all along we’ve all been barking up the wrong ‘Dr. Hubert Henderson’ phone tree…”
“Dr. Hubert Henderson…Dr. Hubert Henderson…Dr. Hubert Henderson…Dr. Hubert Henderson…”
“Dammit, out of 20 pieces of mail addressed to Dr. Hubert Henderson, none of them are actually addressed to me.”
I sighed a mildly melodramatic sigh. I had checked my work mailbox–which, like my work phone number, has gone completely unused with the rarest of exceptions–for the first time since the pandemic had started. I was originally surprised that to find so much mail in my box, until I soon realized that, for some mysterious reason, I was getting most of the mail addressed to any and all ‘Dr. Hubert Hendersons’ within in the Puke hospital system.
Again, I turned to my old friend, the Googles, to investigate why I was receiving all written correspondence directed to my doppelnämer, Dr. Hubert W. Henderson (for comparison, I’m Dr. Hubert J. Henderson–and yes, that’s my real middle initial).
Well, you can imagine what type of article might be returned upon searching ‘Dr. Hubert Henderson Puke University’…an obituary. And it turns out that my erstwhile name-sharer and co-worker-by-the-loosest-definitions had shed this mortal coil and passed on to the Great Beyond where all Dr. Hubert Hendersons are destined to go.
And what I discovered from his obituary was that for once, it was me that was dragging a good common name through the mud. I mean, the lowered all the flags at the hospital when my man passed on, for heaven’s sake!
Anyways, that quickly solved the Mystery of The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Work Mail. And also the aforementioned The Bobbsey Twins and the Mystery of Who’s ----- Phone Number Is This?
Out of curiosity, I decided to see if there was any important mail that I might be morally obligated to notify the send of dear Dr. Hubert Hendersons timely demise.
“Nope…nope…nope…maybe, but I don’t have the energy…nope, nope, nope, and nope…”
“But wait? Hark! What’s this? *Ahem*:”
“Dear Dr. Hubert Henderson: as a respected and experienced member in your field, the National Association of Cardiac Surgeons invites you to fill out a quick survey. In exchange for your valued opinion and insight, we would gratefully compensate you with a $200 pre-paid Visa gift card…”
*Looks around suspiciously*
“Well, I am legally Dr. Hubert Henderson, after all…”
*Looks around suspiciously again*
“And I have had experience in cardiac surgery…”
*Looks around suspiciously a third, super-suspiciously, time*
“It looks like it’s time to cash in on this good name of mine. I mean, if it’s my identity, no one could even argue that it’s identity fraud…”
Content created on: 18/19 January 2025 (Sat/Sun)
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