it ain't me, babe

It's not as if I've never been confused for someone else. There was that one day in the late Eighties when I walked out of a Charleston Fas-Chek and someone screamed, "Oh my gosh! It's her! It's her!"

I didn't know what to say. I didn't see the resemblance. I couldn't guess, first off, what Molly Ringwald would be doing shopping at a Fas-Chek.

This morning I ran into an old high school classmate in the sewing aisle at Wal-Mart. She stopped me and said, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Always," I say, bracing myself for the worst.

"Are you the girl on the WVAccess page?"

"I certainly hope not," I said, laughing.

It's true I've done a few endorsements. I saw my own Stern Man boxers on Yahoo! Mail for a day (with the message: Need a Place to Store That Intergalactic Mail?) and I've been an enthusiastic spokesperson for Guidant.

Yet I can't imagine my marketing campaign has spread quite that far. I mean to have a supply of stock images out there in the public domain that just anyone could use (as if they'd want to).

"Every time I go to this website ," she continued, "I see this picture of a girl typing at a computer and I'm almost positive it's you."

So of course I had to go home and look it up. And though I guess maybe I see a resemblance, the primary response for me was one of delight: because that girl, whoever she is, is really skinny.

I know this is bad to admit, but it completely made my day.