Earlier this week, I sent a gift to Lauren, my oft-times editor and co-plotter and collaborator on many laugh-y things. I sent her a gift because, well, I felt like it. Like a late Xmas gift or something. Whatever. The point is a company had sent a box to her dwelling.

Like I always tend to when I ship things to people as surprises, I put my phone number down in the contact info. Just in case, I tell myself, besides no one has ever called me about a package, so where’s the problem? There ain’t no problem here.

There was a problem.

So I’m at work and my cell rings. I’m free enough to answer it and it’s a number I don’t recognize so I assume it’ll be a ten second “wrong number” call. And then the voice on the phone asks me if I’m Lauren. I think I muttered a confused “Buh?” What I didn’t know was that Lauren’s middle name must be “Buh,” because the guy continued on as if I had said, clearly and loudly, “Yes, I am who you wish to speak to, foolish mortal!”

So he tells me I have a package waiting for me. Suddenly things made sense. It’s true, until then I had no clue why someone was calling me Lauren and making my phone ring. But then I got it. They were letting the person who had their number listed as the recipient know the package was there.

Except knowing that I started to worry. I mean I had just, inadvertently, claimed to be another person! That’s gotta be a problem, somewhere. What if, I thought, they ask again? Do I come clean or just say “Buh” again and hope it works? I couldn’t admit to them that I wasn’t Lauren, because then I would have to explain and the entire phone call would become so odd as to implode the universe. But then I would have to keep up this living of a lie. What if, I pondered, they called back later? Would I have to still be Lauren? Where would the lies stop?

And for a few seconds I entered this odd mindset where I would have to telephonically pretend to be Lauren, and avoid her finding out until I was slowly stealing her life, over the phone until something like… I dunno… C. Thomas Howell saved us all, or whatever. In the 80′s. With a mullet. .

And then I got over it, hung up the phone and tried to explain all of this in one short txt msg to Lauren. Whom, I am sure, shrugged and thought “Well, he’s batshit crazy, whatever, package, hooray!” But for a tiny bit there I was ready to star in an 80′s action/crime/thriller. I was.

Buh.