The Mistaken Identity

September 9, 2007 on 12:35 pm | In New York |

As I’ve written before, I’m often mistaken for being a cop, but there are some other fun stories of mistaken identity worth sharing that occurred recently.

Yankee Stadium Employee: at a recent Yankees game, my friend Mike and I were waiting for a friend outside Yankee stadium. There are hundreds of people out there at any given point before the game, so two guys wearing Yankees t-shirts shouldn’t draw much attention, but people kept coming up to me and asking if I worked there. I generally replied, “No, but can I help you?” and ended up directing close to a dozen people to the appropriate places. It was an odd situation because there were real employees around the stadium but they consistently came to me instead for help.

Professional Wrestler: the interesting thing about this mistaken identity is that I’m only ever mistaken for a wrestler at hospitals. Every time I’m there, someone asks me if I’m a wrestler. Then again, needing to wear specially sized hospital robes (because the regular ones are too tight), probably makes them think I’m training to beat up someone.

Marine Paratrooper: well, this one is bizarre. Kurt visited this week and we traveled on the subway to go to most places. On Monday, around Central Park, we were getting off the subway when some guy (who seemed a bit crazy) asked me how many pushups I could do and said he thought I could do 100 million pushups. He wasn’t kidding and followed it up by asking me if I was a Marine. I was a bit surprised and he kept saying how I was military guy, could beat up some guy standing next to us and then when leaving, said he thought I was a paratrooper. He was still yelling this even as I was exiting the train.