Fame

Once I had a film crew following me around. It’s actually pretty cool. People look at you like you must be famous.

Yeah, I’m famous -Internet famous. That means a very very tiny percentage of people spread extremely thinly over the whole planet might recognize me.

That day, however, people really wondered who I might be. A young eager team with very expensive equipment followed me around. A man in his early 40s asked me serious questions. It was all very impressive looking.

What had actually happened was a friend of mine was part of a college film project. They needed a big guy who didn’t look like a 23 year old college student. Being in my early 40s at the time, I fit the bill and had a few free days. It was loads of fun and I could see how being followed by a film crew all day could inflate the heck out of a person’s ego.


This past winter my lovely wife and I might have mistaken for other people -important people.

We tried to get into a mid range restaurant for dinner, but it was packed with a long waiting line. My lovely wife spotted a restaurant down the road that was advertising live music. Being a fan of live music, we thought we’d treat ourselves.

Once we got in the door we realized the place was a lot nicer than it looked on the outside, a whole lot nicer. What the heck we thought, it had been a while since we ate out, let’s go for it. There was supposed to be a waiting line for this place too, but we were soon ushered to a table. It was a nice table.

It was a really top notch dining experience. The waiters were right there when we wanted them and invisible when we didn’t need them. When we looked up for one, they were tripping over themselves to get to our table. After a while, it became obvious that the rest of the restaurant wasn’t getting nearly the attention we were. The place was packed, a bit short handed, yet our every whim was attended to.

The food was great. The wine superb. Dessert to die for. I left a good tip, but nothing out of the ordinary. As soon as we left the building a woman came running out of the restaurant, all out of breath. She apologized for not meeting us sooner, but it was very busy. She was the manager. All right then. She wanted to know how our dining experience was. The manager appeared relieved when I told her we had a wonderful dinner. I said good things about the food and the staff.

Weird, but in a good way.

The only thing I can figure is that I must have been mistaken for a food critic. Either that or they thought I was Sixbears the Enforcer from the East Coast Mob.

I’ve also been mistaken for a certain Science Fiction writer. That’s kinda fun too. There are a lot of overweight writers with beards and pony tails.

My dad used to get mistaken for a golf pro who was big in the 60s and 70s. He’d shake their hand and give them golf tips. Pretty good for a guy who never played the game in his life.

So, I’ve been “famous,” by mistake. Although, come to think about it, most of those celebrities are famous by mistake too.

-Sixbears