Mistaken Identities and the Zen of Academic Time Travel

Mistaken identities are no new game for me. After all, I have a background (however slight!) in acting, and even more substantial experience with roleplaying games and LARPs (go ahead and judge me...I think it's funny, too!), so assuming alter egos is something I'm comfortable with. What's slightly more unusual is when someone else is mistaken for me, or when I'm mistaken for someone I most decidedly am not! A friend thought she saw me over the weekend, but it turned out to be a doppelganger in a different-colored car. Another friend thought she saw me at the school I work at, but it was the same story all over again! (I haven't been able to corroborate those stories yet to see if it might have been the same guy or not).

Once, at a Renaissance Faire, I was mistaken for a vendor while perusing a costume shop, and the customer tried to haggle with me over a very nice overcoat until I was able to convince him I was just a typical "playtron". In college, it took nearly 2 weeks to convince one of my friends and classmates that I was not a fellow English major...I just had a soft spot for Shakespeare and a penchant for vandalizing classic poetry.

But now...things have risen to a new level.

After returning home from work today, I checked the mail and had a fairly substantial package in the mailbox from Emory University. I was a little surprised, but it wasn't entirely unexpected - I get occasional mailings from them because I participated in their YTI summer program back in 2004. I opened the package and was a little perplexed to find that it contained an informational poster and a catalog from the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Also included was a cover letter which reads, in part:

"Dear Colleagues,

I take the liberty of writing to ask for your help in alerting your students to the work of our Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and encouraging them to apply to one of our advanced degree programs.

... ... ...

I would be most grateful if you display the enclosed poster and publication catalog for your pre-law and pre-seminary students. ..."

Colleague. Your students. More specifically, your pre-law and pre-seminary students.

Somehow, I seem to have managed to acquire a terminal degree (or two!) and lead a successful (possibly tenured?) professorial career, without even realizing it! And at such a young age, too! I have friends who occasionally remind me that I underestimate myself, and other friends who are quick to tell me I'm an over-achiever, but I didn't realize I was that committed! It's true that in the past I've considered both JD and MDiv as possible degree paths...but I didn't realize I'd already achieved them.

Or maybe this letter is from the future, and is a portent of a nascent career waiting to unfold? I'm sure someone with a background in law and religion, and with a good sense of humor, could find the loopholes in dogmatic law that would allow for time travel, right? ;)

All light-hearted jesting aside, Emory University is a good school, and while I may have received this package in error (even though it was addressed specifically to me), I am happy to pass along the information contained therein.

AND SO...if you have an interest in learning more about Emory's Center for Study of Law and Religion, please check out their website at http://cslr.law.emory.edu/
If you're local, and would look over the information I was sent in person, contact me and we can set up a time to meet and peruse the catalog and visit for a while.

Be well!

"Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"

Once in a while, I get a little snarky while I'm on the phone. Here are a couple of novelty greetings I've used in the past few months (don't worry - only on people I know!):

"Down-home Bait Shop and Fish Fry - you hook 'em and we cook 'em. How may I help you?"

"Roadside Bakery and Game Shop - we roll dough while you roll dice. This is Alan speaking."

(And just one more along those lines!) "Deep Blue Jewelers and Exotic Shark Aquarium - we make watches while you watch makos."

"I'm sorry, we're closed."

"This is 1534 - how may'st I help thee?"

What's the cleverest phone greeting you've ever said or heard?

My dreams would make an interesting "Syfy" original movie

I posted this on another site earlier, so it may be a little familiar, but I wanted to put it here so it was in a slightly more permanent medium.

My dreams are...unusually cinematic!

I dreamt that Robert Sean Leonard was the Green Knight, "the impregnable warrior" who could not be wounded, and he was challenged by "The Alien Terror" - a half-predator gladiator from one of the Rim planets (the result of a genetic hybrid program instituted as a last-ditch effort to oppose the Alliance. It resulted in only one viable warrior, however, and he was mentally unstable and had a bestial intelligence, and either escaped or was "liberated" in the chaos at the end of the war) so strong he could go through anyone's stomach with a single punch. Friar Tuck was the leader of the "resistance" that was loosely organized to oppose the Alien Terror and his tyrannical masters. Friar Tuck had been enchanted (cursed?) so that he was half-bear; his robe (which was actually an outer layer of his own flesh) was of living bear hide, and provided him better protection that human skin, but was also scarred and tattered from past fights he'd gotten in.

Dramatic tension ensued when it was discovered that magic was actually a by-product of a future technology that - when finally discovered - would end up destroying the world, and then just before the confrontation between the Green Knight and the Alien Terror, the dream narrator (me, I guess!) was accidentally sent through space and time to 2006, in the town I grew up in. I ended up in the closet of a friend of mine, somehow having interpreted a cryptic statement from Friar Tuck to mean that I had to cause minor changes in history to prevent a falling-out between my friend and her mother that would lead to us not talking for years - a silence that would, somehow, cause her to begin developing the technology that would destroy Earth and other planets (and when accidentally jettisoned in another time era, would become the source of magic).

Over the course of the night I worked as quickly and quietly as I could to make the necessary changes without waking her up, and then retreated back to the closet when she seemed about to wake up. A little while longer passed and I thought I was alone in the room, so I decided it was time to sneak out and try to find a way back to my own post apocalyptic sci-fi-fantasy-western time era. I opened the closet door and stepped out into the room, and my friend said, "thanks for trying to work quietly last night" (she had been sitting - just out of sight - around the corner of her dresser)! But before I could respond to her, or find out if future-me interacting with past-her would cause a time paradox (especially since past-me lived close by), my alarm clock went off and I woke up!

So, obviously I remember parts of the dream better than others, but it was still a very strange experience, and I still remember it almost 12 hours later!

Also, I'm really intrigued about how and why the dream combined so many different fandoms (at the very least there was Firefly, Final Fantasy, Robin Hood, Quantum Leap, Predator, Terminator, and King Arthur), many of which I don't watch or read! O_o