A Case of Mistaken Identity

November 20, 2022

Have you ever been on the receiving end of the “cold shoulder”? You know, when someone ignores you or pretends that you aren’t even there. These days I think that it is called “ghosting”. I remember the first time it happened to me, back in junior high school. My friends, arriving before me at school one day, conspired to give me the cold shoulder, just for fun. I was first puzzled and then angered by their behavior. And while I clearly didn’t find it fun, that didn’t stop me from joining in when we played the same trick on a different friend a few days later.

Thankfully, I don’t recall ever receiving this treatment again. That is, until about 30 years later, and this time from my wife, Doreen, no less! We were in England for our son’s wedding in 2004. During our time there, the family went on a day trip to explore London. We were in a department store near Oxford circus, if I recall correctly. Finding the women’s clothes on the first floor a bit tedious, my two sons and I decided to explore the second floor. At one point in our wandering we came to the escalators and as I looked down to the floor below, there was Doreen standing with her back turned. I called out to her… no response. Next, I called a bit louder… still nothing. Puzzled by her rude behavior, I called out her name a third time. Again, no response. It was then that I noticed that she hadn’t moved… not even a little bit! I suddenly realized that I was speaking to a mannequin! The amazing thing was that, from the back, her hair style closely resembled my wife’s, so maybe I wasn’t totally out to lunch. I did snap a photo and when I showed it to Doreen, she thought it was of her. So I successfully confused my wife with an inanimate object and lived to tell the tale! 

A while ago I was reading about how people who receive organ transplants need to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. “Anti-rejection drugs”,  I thought! If I had only known that there was such a thing when I was back in junior high.