Mistaken Identity

It all began last Friday. The phone calls. First just a couple.

Me: Hello?

Caller: Hello, I'm calling from XYZ School in the Veneto region. Am I speaking to Maria Rossi? (Let's just use this alias to protect the innocent.)

Me: No, I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number.

Caller: Well, let me just check. Is this 1234567891?

Me: Yes, it is, but I'm not Maria.

Caller: Well, this is the number we have in our data. Could you tell Maria we called?

Me: I don't know Maria. There must be some mistake.

Caller: Maria has won a post as a substitute teacher at our school and we absolutely must inform her. (pregnant pause... like they expect ME to do something about it)

Me: Look, I'm sorry, but I'm not Maria, my name is Saretta. I don't know Maria. I don't live in the Veneto region. I live in the province of Bari and I am not looking for a job!

Caller: Oh well then, goodbye...

Take this conversation and multiply it over the next 3 days by...oh, I don't know...about 30 I would say. Just about enough to drive me mad.

There were various "types" of callers in the bunch. I divide them into 3 basic groups: 1) those who thought the mix-up was a good laugh and were good-natured about the whole thing; 2) those who were surprised and concerned and begged my forgiveness for having bothered me unnecessarily; and 3) those who wanted Maria Rossi from me, come hell or high water!

These, as you can imagine, were the worst. I found myself trapped in impossible conversations with school officials with bull-dog like tenacity. I learned all kinds of interesting facts about Maria that certainly should never have been given out to a complete stranger on the telephone.

Caller: Are you sure? Were you, by chance, born in Naples in 1967 and are now currently a resident in (town's name)?

I had to just bite my tongue not to respond, "Oh, yeah, now that you remind me, that is me! I am Maria! How could I have forgotten?"

After call number 35 or 36 I had to take things into my own hands. Not only was I being driven crazy by a constantly ringing cell-phone, but poor Maria was losing out on a whole lot of possible job opportunities. With unemployment being what it is in this country, and the fate of the vast army of substitute teachers being as precarious as it is...I started to feel responsible for this person.

So, I decided to find her, and find her I did! Where? On Facebook, of course! (See what a social network expert I am becoming!) Turns out that while my cell-phone number is something like 1234567891, hers is 1234567892 and somewhere along the line a mistake was made in writing that number down.

Maria was quite thrilled to hear from me, and to hear that she had been called by so many schools. Luckily for her, she is already working somewhere until June. In an email exchange she asked me, "will they call me in September?"

That may have been the last straw...

Is it Only Me?

Or are there other social network complete incompetents out there?

I don't know what it is, but I always seem to get into trouble when I get involved in these things. Take Facebook, for example. I don't "get" Facebook, in the sense of I really don't see what all the excitement is about. I'll admit it's got it's good points. You can find people who you thought were long-lost. On the down side, however, you can be found by people you had hoped were long-lost!

I found my half-sister whom I had lost contact with for about 5 years, that was good. I found a little boy I knew in Mexico a lifetime ago, who is now a 27 year old concert pianist in Luxembourg, that is fascinating.

But, do I really want to be kept up to date on the daily comings and goings of all kinds of fringe relatives, old high school pals I don't even remember and complete and total strangers who ask to be my "friend" for God knows what reason?

Okay, so with a stretch of the imagination I can take a guess at the reason...they are always men, interested in women, looking for friendship and/or dating. There doesn't seem to be an age limit for this kind of Facebook approach. Before I figured out that I should make my profile available only to friends, I was getting tons of these requests from guys of all ages. My favorite was from an 18-year-old Egyptian man working at a McDonalds in Milan. What? I mean I'm a lot older than him and living at the other end of the peninsula. I guess I should be flattered...

And then there have been the Facebook disasters of my own making. I thought I had found a person I know. The name was the same. The photo showed a short, dark-haired guy standing on the kind of rock beach we have around here. He immediately accepted my request for friendship and wrote me a lovely, indecipherable note in terrible Italian saying that yes, he loved scuba-diving (my real friend is a diver), but his real interest was in esoterism! Alarm bells started ringing! This could not be the right guy, my friend is a teacher, he couldn't write that poorly...and esoterism? If you ask me, it was secret code for "kinky sex"! I unfriended the guy. He immediately sent me another friendship request. I blocked him. Oh dear...

This kind of thing has happened more than once. I'm like a weirdo magnet!

I haven't had much better luck with Skype, either. I hadn't set up my account 5 minutes when I get a message from a guy with some name like Dirk, saying "hi! watcha doin'?" Today it was "Haylie Sexy" who wanted to show me some pictures...great...

So, what? Is it just me, or have you had experiences like mine, too?