There aren’t many Scott Lefflers in the world. And there’s only one me. (No doubt there are scores of people who would tell you that’s a good thing — I’m inclined to agree.)
The previous paragraph is a purely unintentional poem, I assure you. But I digress … already.
Occasionally, I get emails or phone calls for people who aren’t me. Surely, you have the same issue from time to time. My standard operating procedure is to respond to the email or phone call and tell them that they person they intended their message for didn’t receive it. I’d hate to think that some day someone was calling me and got someone else and they just deleted it. I may have already won the Publishers Clearinghouse or something and I wouldn’t even know it.
I work with a man named Bill Wolcott. I’ve known Bill all of my adult life. I admire him greatly. He has the best stories and an incredible work ethic. Occasionally, I have to call him to ask him a question about a story he’s written so I can make sure I understand it. It’s part of my job here at the paper.
I used to work with another man named Bill Wolcott. I have his phone number as well. Occasionally, apparently, I called and left him voicemail intended for the other Bill Wolcott. One day he called me back to let me know that he’d received numerous messages for the other Bill. Hilarity ensued.
I digressed again. Sorry.
A couple weeks ago, I got an email intended for another Scott Leffler. See, there are a few of us. There’s me, there’s a professional baseball player and there’s a mixed martial arts fighter. I’m sure there are others as well, but when I google myself, those are the other two I often find.
The email I got was a contract for a professional fight in Las Vegas. It offered me more money for a single fight than I’ll make this year. I considered accepting the offer. I mean, I’d be willing to get beaten up for a few minutes in exchange for the ability to pay off my car loan. Heck, I got beat up in high school for free!
Instead, I emailed back telling the guy he had the wrong Scott Leffler. I was a little miffed that I never got a thank you. It’s not that I did it to get any sort of recognition, but a thank you would have been nice, don’t you think?
Oddly, the baseball player and I have mutual acquaintances. A couple of years ago a friend of mine told me she ran into him at a Buffalo Bisons baseball game. She mentioned to him that she had a friend named Scott Leffler. He said, “The radio guy?!” Apparently, he’d googled himself, too. Either that or he had gotten a contract offer for me, too … and it never got forwarded on to me.