I’ve never thought my name was all that common. I mean, I know other Lauras – I work with two and am related to a third – and my last name is the same of a big real estate company in town but I’m not related to them.
And then there’s my middle name. It’s Marie, one of the most common middle names ever, at least from 1980-1990. Seriously. I have at least four friends with that middle name, one of the girls in youth group has the same middle name and two of my aunts do.
But I have never met another person with the exact same full name as me – or at least same first, last and middle initial – until I went to WKU for college.
At first, nothing weird happened. Then, around my sophomore year, I started getting e-mails. Weird ones. About lawyer-type things. And then, on one trip to downtown BG, I saw a law office with my name on it. Laura M. Hagan. WHAT?
That’s who’s e-mails I’d been getting. Asking me for legal advice. And telling me to expect a phone call from this person or that person. How? I’m not sure. I had a .edu e-mail address through school. Was my doppleganger – there’s that word again – a student AND a lawyer?
I still have that e-mail address, by the way. Thanks to being in the 100th graduating class at WKU, we got to keep the e-mail addresses for life. Thanks, Uncle Gary.
It’s been pretty quiet on the mysterious e-mail front in the past few years, but today, another one showed up. It told me to expect a call from some theater person in Bowling Green because I am this person’s “go-to on everything, IP, copyrighting…”
I don’t know copyrighting, but I do know copy-editing. They are nothing alike. And everything I know about law I learned from Law and Order and Jodi Picoult books. Mostly, I can just throw out random law-ish words.
OBJECTION!
YOU’RE IN CONTEMPT!
I REST MY CASE.
On account of... 