[2023-03-29] Miss Wellington and other assumed identities

There's something about sitting around a campfire that inspires the recounting of funny stories. I shared a few of my favourites on my recent trip to the Ottawa Valley.

Miss Wellington
When I studied journalism at Carleton University in the mid-'80s, one of the assignments we were given was to find out as much as possible about a particular person using public records. Our prof gave each group of students the name of someone running for local government. Now, these were pre-Internet days, so we couldn't simply google the name of our subject. Instead, we consulted the candidate's nomination form for municipal elections. We used telephone directories. We looked for birth, death and marriage notices in newspapers. And we attempted to get his licence plate number, which could help us obtain his date of birth.

At one point, I called the candidate's office. I later wondered whether I should have used my real name, so the next time I called, I identified myself as Miss Wellington. When the person on the phone said, "I thought you were Miss Hollington," I insisted that they had misheard me, and that I was actually Miss Wellington.

My team members and I took turns observing our subject's house, in the hopes of seeing him arrive in a vehicle so that we could get his licence plate number. One Saturday night in October 1985, I found myself alone on a dark street outside the candidate's house. Thinking that his car might be one of the many parked on the street, I started crouching behind each car in turn, writing down the licence plate number. At one point, the man emerged from his house and scurried to catch up to me as I quickly exited the scene. I heard him call:
— Miss Wellington! Miss Wellington!
— I'm not Miss Wellington.
— Well, when I saw you loitering about, I thought you might be Miss Wellington.

We never discovered much of interest about this poor man. The only tidbit of note was that he had been robbed five times in the past nine years. I imagine that our attempts to gather information on him only added to his trust issues.

Stealing a cab
It turns out that I'm not the only person in my family who has assumed a false identity. When Chris and I were first dating, in December 1989, we each spent Christmas with our respective families. I decided to come back to Ottawa early, after a few days at my mom's house. I called Chris, who was eager to make it back to my apartment in Ottawa from his brother's house in Gatineau. The only problem was that there were no cabs, despite his having called one. When a cab from the appropriate company arrived at the taxi stand where he was waiting, Chris rushed out to it. Opening the cab door, he heard the taxi driver say:
— M. Tremblay? [Mr. Tremblay?]
— Ah... Oui! C'est ça! [Ah... Yes! That's it!]
He had hesitated only a second before climbing in. About halfway between Gatineau and Ottawa, the dispatcher contacted the cab driver and said:
— M. Tremblay, est-il dans ton taxi? [Do you have Mr. Tremblay in your cab?]
It was clear to the cabbie that Chris was not Mr. Tremblay. But, as they were already across the bridge and the cab driver had gotten a nice, long fare, he didn't seem to mind.

Can my husband come see me?
As I've shared before, when I was pregnant for Shane, I had awful morning sickness, throwing up every day. On Canada Day 1990, I felt so dehydrated that I asked Chris to take me to the emergency department at the Civic Hospital. Once I was finally admitted, given a shot of gravel and put on an intravenous to replenish my fluids, I asked a nurse:
— Can my boyfriend come see me?
— Oh no. Only family is allowed.

So, when a different nurse walked by, I stopped her and said,
— Can my husband come see me?
— Yes, of course, dear. What does he look like? I'll go fetch him from the waiting area.

Chris later told me that when the nurse said to him, "Your wife can see you now," he almost blurted out, "My wife?" But he caught himself in time and said, "Oh, thank you."

New category: Humour
This afternoon, I added a new section on my Categories page to gather all the funny posts I've written in Jenesis, including this one. I hope you enjoy them.