Mistaken Identity

This week the pages of my life seem to have been ripped from an episode of the Twilight Zone. Last Friday my assistant at work confronted me with the question, "Are you quiting?" Her worried inquiry made me laugh outright as I have been employed at the same business for more than twenty five years. Why in the world would I consider looking for employment elsewhere at my age? There is nowhere in this small, northwest Iowa, rural community where I could start anew and receive the same compensation I now receive. My pay is very reasonable, the insurance is good and I get five weeks paid vacation per year. Not only that, but I like my job ... it is what I know and what I wanted to be when I grew up!

I countered my friends inquiry with, "Where did you get that idea? Don't you think you would be the first to know?" Well, it turns out that a former employee had put the same question to our customer service clerk. She had been very straight forward when she told the employee, "I hear Audrey isn't working here anymore." The clerk was somewhat dumfounded as she knew that I had been at work every day that week and had not mentioned anything about leaving. She tried to correct the bearer of the news and at that point was told that this report came from a very reliable source. As the week went on I tried to find out who that source had been, to no avail. I then started making my own assumptions. Could it have been wishful thinking on the part of an employee who isn't crazy about me? Could that person have discretely put the notion in someone else's head that maybe I wasn't happy here and that I was possibly thinking of resigning my postion. I began to get a little paranoid about that possibility as, for the most part, I feel that I am fairly well liked. Then another possiblity occured to me. My husband started a new job in November and was actually hired by a staffing service. This company pays him on a weekly basis so I stop each Friday and pick up his check. That had to be it! Someone had seen me going into the employment agency and assumed that it was because I was looking for new employment opportunities.

Yesterday the icing on the cake was applied. I decided to ask another long time employee about the rumor and see what he knew. Yes, Larry had heard the same rumor and was frankly quite shocked at the onset simply because, he also was told that the source was very reliable. We had no sooner finished our discussion than he went into the sit-down deli area to chat with some customers. He immediately came back to where I was standing and told me yet another amazing story. One of the customers he spoke with said he was surprised to see Audrey here. One of his friends from Omaha had called him this week and told him that, after all these years, Audrey had changed jobs. How that rumor got down the road 150 miles to Omaha, I will never know! I searched my brain for answers to this very perplexing quandry I had been thrown into. It was no big deal except, what if my boss got wind of this and thought I was abandoning my duties?

All of a sudden it was as if a one hundred watt bulb enlightened my thought processes. It had to be a case of mistaken identity. I reflected back over the past few months. I recalled a day about a year ago when I stopped at the jewelry store to pick up a ring I had left there for repairs. When I inquired about it the clerk said, "Oh, we have your Mother's Ring ready too." I told her that I hadn't left my Mother's Ring there but she insisted and produced a lovely ring that I would have liked to claim, but it simply wasn't mine. She looked at the tag and said, "Well, it says Audrey Winter here. That's funny, there must be another Audrey Winter." A couple months later I received a piece of mail from a local surgeon with the results of a procedure I supposedly had done. Since I was positive that I hadn't had the procedure, I called his office to tell them they had sent the mail to the wrong person. I had to do a little convincing with them too, but when I told them my date of birth they were persuaded to agree that the report did indeed belong to a different Audrey Winter.

A couple of months after that incident I came home from work to a message on the anwering machine telling me to call the hospital. They needed to discuss the procedure I would be having the following day. Once again, I knew nothing about this test and had to convince the admisssions clerk that it wasn't me she wanted.
The identity crisis continued as I stopped at the pharmacy last week to pick up a prescription for my husband. The window attendant informed me that they had my prescription ready too. I knew that I had picked up my bottle of pills a few days prior to this, so was rather confused. I expressed my bewilderment to the clerk and she took a better look at the package. "Oh," she exclaimed, " this is one we owed you." From that comment I made the assumption that I hadn't noticed, but my prescription must have been short and they owed me a few more. Thinking nothing of it, I proceeded home only to find, when I arrived there, that the pills were not mine after all. They belonged to an Audrey Winter in a neighboring town. I returned the bottle to the pharmacy and am hoping that this mistake will make all the health care providers a little more aware of the fact that there may be two patients with the same name.

Shortly after my discussion with Larry at the store I spotted my cousin doing some shopping. She works at the pharmacy so I asked her if she knew of another person, that frequented the drug store,with the same name as me. Yes! In fact she had been going though records one day when she ran across this other person and thought they had the wrong address on my records. After closer inspection she discovered that this was an entirely seperate account. The name was the same but the birthdate was different. "But," she said, "her handwriting is exactly like yours! The signatures are almost identical!" Well, this really got me thinking.

When I got home yesterday I accessed the internet and started searching. Indeed, there is another person with my name living close by. I soon found her husband's name, her address and phone number. Not only that, but I found her age and was astounded to discover that we are both 57 years old!

Today I called my twin. She was aware that she has a name twin but hasn't encountered the incidents that I have. We had a nice conversation and I found out that she is working at a fairly new fast food joint in the same town where I work. Someone put that information with my name and came up with me and a new career. The mystery has been solved.