A couple of weeks ago my professional email address was stolen by  spammers who used it to send thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of email offering anything from male enhancement pills to mortgage refinancing . I probably wouldn't even have noticed anything but for the spam filters all around the world that rejected these messages which then bounced back into MY inbox. Over 2500 of them! Staggering, infuriating, and scary too. I started patiently sifting through them in case there were actually some addressed to me. I noticed that they came literally from all over the word: I spotted some .ru for Rumania, .fr for France, .nz for New Zealand even .ch for Switzerland ( I hope none of my friends got any!)

 

I gave up about 20 minutes and a couple of hundred email later. It was going to take me all day and my right index finger - the one in charge of the "delete" key - was getting all crampy. So I  hit "select all" and then "delete all", enjoyed the little sound effect as these thousands of bounced messages - and a few of yours probably too, sorry - vanished for ever.

 

But the inbox started filling up again as soon as I was done.

 

 I must have shouted that real loud. 

But then I started to worry. What if?

What if THEY had not only stolen my email address but also taken my identity? What if THEY were using my identity to commit who knows what crime, sneak into my credit cards, or even worse, what if they had become me? And if they had become me, who had I become? Scary thoughts. Scary but  maybe that could explain why I don't remember  when friends or customers who tell me they saw me at the Apollo Grill for example or on Green Street with a lady in a pink dress. Maybe it was not me, maybe it was my Stolen Identity pretending to be Me (Hey you out there: I want the name of that lady in the pink dress!)

 

So, full of doubts and anxiety I decided to google myself. I figured that if I'd recognized some of the information that came up about me on the screen I'd be reassured that I was really still myself. The  results were encouraging: I recognized a few race results from when I was a runner, saw some posts on  the Artwalk website,  some others on Mo's ex and now Bronwen's newsletters, some links to newspaper articles where my name was mentioned. I even came upon some of my old newsletters. That was the real convincing element of my quest: nobody else could have written that, or if someone did they would never have put it out there for all to read. My heart beat returned slowly to levels I could tolerate, and the bottle of wine I was holding on to  did just the opposite. The most reassuring part was that my name was not associated with anything dirty, or illegal, or illegally dirty. I was me, just me, and I was clean. 

 

Have you ever googled yourself? I'm sure you have, come on, we all have. It's a great exercise. Some  do it just like me to sort of convince themselves that they do exist, some to check if someone is chatting behind their back while some others have an urgent need for some quick egocentric cyber-trip. These have to be careful though, it's a double edged sword: there better be something about them out there because having "no results found" pop up on the screen or the first mention about them coming at page 3921 is not much of an ego boost.

 

After this episode I tried googling my last name only just to be sure. Quite revealing:  first of all I dropped to page 25, which was, well, a drop (this time the bottle followed the same path) But I also discovered a myriad of Pasches that I had never heard of and even some I should have heard of. There were of course your usual Swiss bankers and cheese and chocolate makers, watchmakers  and vintners and yodlers; I also found that the president of the Swiss Watch industry Federation is called Jean-Daniel Pasche, that there was a Pasche English composer in the 15th century, a Pasche Sea Food place in Rutland VT and a "Pasche of the World" group on Facebook. Nothing too exciting until I came upon Louis Pasche (my Dad's name, incidentally) a stamp dealer more famous for his forgeries

 

 forged stamps by Louis Pasche

But by far the biggest surprise was to discover that this image

 

 

 had been created by one of my homonyms, John Pasche.

 

So, after all this you'd think I'd be quite certain of my identity, right? Well, not quite, I was still feeling a little lost. And what do you do when you're lost? You mapquest yourself of course. So I did.

 

And I found myself.

 

In Texas! 

Yep, Pasche, TX! I of course had to do a little research and this is what I found, for those of you not yet bored by this self-centered rambling:

PASCHE, TEXAS. Pasche was on Brady Creek about a mile south of what is now U.S. Highway 87 and nine miles east of Eden in southeastern Concho County. The community had a post office from 1907 until sometime after 1930. In 1908 promotional literature for the county cited Pasche as one of five Concho communities having a windmill. Pasche became a station on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway sometime around 1912, when a line was completed from Lometa (Lampasas County) westward to Eden. In 1914 Pasche had one gin, two general stores, and a population of fifty. From 1925 until 1967, the last year for which a figure is available, Pasche reported a population of twenty-five. In 1936 the community had a school, a church, and a seasonal industry. In 1940 the school, which encompassed grades one through seven, had two teachers and an average daily attendance of eighteen. By 1955 the Pasche school had been consolidated with the Melvin (McCulloch County) school district. By 1970 only a few scattered buildings remained in the vicinity.

 

Alright, not quite a megapolis. But it was 9 miles East of Eden. What I was really nervous about though was how far Pasche, TX was from Crawford, TX. I was quite happy to discover that there is about 160 miles between the 2. Crawford is actually very close to Waco.