dear so and so
I have this crazy pressing need to tell people things. I spend a lot of my days telling people things. I think I probably tell too much, like Sylvia Plath baring it all and then baking her head in an oven. That’s what it feels like to tell everyone everything all the time. The thing is, people want to know. People usually like knowing and once you start to tell everyone everything they all want to know.
Although I’ve ran into some characters that don’t like to know. I once found the phone number of someone with my name, but born years earlier. 1938. I rang his number and he picked up. “Hello,” someone said. “Yes is this Joseph Hurtgen?” I said. “Yes, speaking.” Oh man, an old guy with an old style I thought. “Well I’m Joseph Hurtgen too.” The other line was silent for a moment of static. “Who is this?” “We’ve got the same name.” I told him. “How has it treated you? I’ve had a pretty good run of things so far with it, what about you?” The phone got hung up pretty fast from there. Sharing the same name was enough for the guy I guess. Or maybe the name had been bad karma for that Joseph Hurtgen. Maybe kids in middle school used to say Joe’s a virgin like they did for me. Maybe they never got his name right and maybe he got to sit beside a pretty girl with last name starting K because no one has a last name starting with an I or a J and she either never noticed him or he was too shy to ask her out on a date. Maybe the girl had incredibly sad eyes and when he tried to help her with some schoolwork one day her eyes were wells of tears. I’ll never know I guess. But what I do know is that having the same name as someone else isn’t a good enough reason to trade life stories. I really wanted to know about him too.
