I’ve tried to be very careful when I’m writing and not use people’s full names and in some cases completely changing names. Well, as some of you already know, I recently blew it. I was checking my mail and there winking at me from my inbox was a note from a person I hadn’t seen in 25 years. I very hesitantly opened it up since I had a feeling it had to do with a post from a few months before. Sure enough, it basically said “hi, I think you wrote about me on your blog. I don’t remember you and I don’t remember the incident described.”

Where I’d gone wrong is in the telling of the story. For years, I’d told the story using the person’s full name. In was so much a part of the story that when I typed it, it never even registered. Even if it had, I would have never dreamed in a million years that not only would this person grow up to learn to read and write, but that they’d know how to use the internet, much less how to Google their own name. Stupid Dallas school system for turning out literate people. Hey, I never said I didn’t have a long and ugly arrogant streak on occasion; But you see, I really didn’t like these pack of kids and they were the catalysts for some major events that happened in my life. The best one being that I never had to step foot into another Dallas school again.

We wrote back and forth a little bit and he seems like he’s turned out to be a nice guy. In truth, of that particular gang of kids who said things like “if you ride the bus tomorrow, we’ll kill you” thus teaching me the value of a good 2-3 mile walk to school, he was one of the more decent ones.

It’s just another Lucy moment for the books and a small lesson about using real names.