RE: mistaken identity

About three years ago I met a girl in a coffee shop. I think her name was Nicole. We had a few strange conversations over the next couple of months and that was it for awhile. Several months later she walked up to me at the same coffee shop and said, “Hi Kyle.”

I answered, “Hello, it’s Jeff actually.”

In the course of the confusing conversation that followed, she referred to an email she’d sent me. Though we’d traded email addresses, we’d never actually exchanged any email. Later I made the connection between “Kyle” and the never-received email. I fired off an email to her, explaining that she’d confused me with someone else, the subject line was “mistaken identity”.

She replied, saying that she’d gotten Kyle’s email, thinking it was from me, and at one point had even denied to Kyle that he’d ever written to her. (Wow. That sentence could be lifted from the chatter of a couple of high school girls.)

That was it (except it wasn’t).


I was down at the waterfront today, where I take my daily Horizon photo. I’d run into a number of different people that morning – friendly neighbors, old co-workers, people whose name I know but who don’t know my name, and people who know my name but whose name I don’t know – so I was receptive to saying hello to people. I was being sociable. I noticed someone I’d seen around before, someone who I don’t know. He was talking to someone and for a moment I thought it was Nicole. I took a second glance and realized I was wrong, it was someone else.

My day continued. Later at home, I checked my email. There was an email from Nicole, the first since May 2000. The message was just one word: “hello?”. She’d written it as a response to my email from way back when, so the subject line was: “RE: mistaken identity”.


It crossed my mind that it might actually have been her down at the pier this afternoon, and that she’d seen me and sent the email as a joke. But the email was sent a few minutes before the time stamp on today’s Horizon shot, and therefore before I saw that girl.


I dug through my old email after I started writing this. I couldn’t find my side of the thread, but I found the email she sent, and it reminds of something else that happened that day. The last line says: “it’s raining out right now tip tap it’s really beautiful on my window.” It rained hard that night. I walked down to the waterfront really late, where I stood and let the rain soak me right through my clothes, I mentioned that in my response to her.


To summarize: On May 28, 2000, Nicole(?) mistook me for someone else. Later, I went down to Pier 62/63 to brood in the rain. Today, I stood there at the same pier and mistook someone for Nicole, just as she was emailing me (“RE: mistaken identity”).

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