I got an email at work Friday from the receptionist saying I’d gotten a package from Verizon Wireless. Since I have no relationship with Verizon, I figured she had made a mistake, and it was probably for a VP who is also named Eric. People sometimes accidentally send me email meant for him. When the receptionist got tired of the box cluttering her desk, she brought it to me, and sure enough, it said “Eric Smith” right on it. Then I wondered mildly if it might be a bomb.
While I have no mail bombing experience, it didn’t seem like sending a bomb Federal Express with a tracking number and such a nice return address is the right way to do it. So I decided to have a look.
Inside, of all things you might imagine coming from Verizon Wireless, was a new cell phone. There were also urgent sounding missives using lots of bold fonts saying that I should be darn sure I accept the service agreement before I broke the seal on the phone. There was also an invoice with my name and my cell number. Could Verizon actually be sending unsolicited cell phones? I called them fearing some kind of sales pitch, but the lady seemed as mystified as me, right up to the point where she hung up on me.
I didn’t have the fortitude for Verizon’s customer service menu odyssey twice in one day, so I sat back and pondered the possibility that….
I dialed my cell number as it appeared on the invoice, and heard “Hi, this is Eric. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back.”
“Er, hi, this is also Eric. I might have a package for you,” I reported, adding my phone number. A few minutes later I got a call from Eric, who said he felt like he was in an alternate universe. It turns out that Eric Smith works for another company in the same office building as me, one floor down.
Having a somewhat common name has led to several experiences like this one. Most common is someone calling and asking, “Are you the Eric Smith that [works for…, used to live in…, is related to…, etc.]” When I was in school and single, a lot of those calls were from girls, and it was kind of discouraging that none of them were actually looking for me.
At one point I got a call from a girl who said she had met me at ZCMI. That was an easy one since I hadn’t been to ZCMI in years. But then she read me my address “I” had given her, and it was in fact mine. As far as I knew, I was the only Eric Smith living in my apartment. Was someone actually impersonating me now? I eventually figured out that she was a single mom using her daughter’s fund raiser customer list to pick up guys.
There are some positive aspects of a common name. One is a certain amount of anonymity. For example, I’m pretty much Google proof, as evidenced by this site that chronicles the online presence of Eric Smith (and this is actually several years out-of-date).
Another, ironically, is fame — at least among the other people who share the name with you. Shortly after my mission, I was in a religion class where we all introduced ourselves, like “I’m so-and-so from such-and-such place. I went on a mission to such-and-such exotic country…” A few rows after I had done my introduction, a guy stood up and said, “I’m Eric Smith, and I’ve heard of that other Eric Smith over there, because I went to Brazil on my mission and heard about an Elder Eric Smith down south in São Paulo.” I was kind of surprised. I even felt a little flattered, and tried to think of what kind of heroic deed I might have done for my name make it to another mission two thousand miles away.
It was probably somebody else.