Names

An amusing thing happened last night. My friend Dave was coming over. While anticipating his arrival a spot on CBS News came on the television. They were talking about Niagara Falls, specifically the recent renovation of the Illumination, where they light up the falls after dark. I actually never knew they did that, and that it’s a tradition dating back to the 19th century. But I would likely have paid no attention to this news segment except that I thought it might make for a small bit of conversation when Dave arrived. So as I’m listening they interview the president of the committee that led this redesign of the Illumination. His name was Mark Thomas. I laughed. Dave laughed when I told him this upon his arrival just a few seconds later.

It reminded me of the time back in 1995 when my name was on the front page of the New York Times. This was years before my name really was on A1, but that’s another story. I learned of this 1995 NYT appearance when a woman I knew online, who was in Seattle at the time, said something like “I saw your vile, racist self on the front page of the New York Times.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, and no one had home scanners or digital cameras back then, so she sent me the copy of the paper in the mail. I still have it somewhere. The story opens with something like “Mark Thomas’ compound of hate is a bastion of Nazi rage…” There was, it turned out, a really nasty dude named Mark Thomas who ran some kind of Nazi training compound.

I never put this together until years later but I realized that this probably explained why, in the early and mid 1990s, I would occasionally receive e-mails containing brazen white supremacist tracts. These e-mails were typically sent to dozens, even hundreds of people. I just deleted them but it was always kind of unsettling in its way. Spam e-mail was not the blight that it is today, making it seem to me that I was receiving these e-mails out of someone’s thought that I would have some interest.

Maybe I was just getting those messages at random. But I think the better answer is that someone found my name and web site through Altavista or Yahoo (or whatever the searchie of the hour was back then) and assumed I was the guy in the New York Times story.

The Niagara Falls Mark Thomas also reminded me of the neurologist visit 5 or 6 years ago. The neuro was a youngish guy, maybe early 30s. The first thing he said to me was “Mark Thomas! I know a Mark Thomas who used to work at Sports Illustrated.” I visibly balked at this. It was entirely possible I had worked with or somehow known this person at Sports Illustrated when I worked there from 1995 to 1997.

Alas, he explained that he was a golf caddy for the other Mark Thomas who worked at SI. I think that MT was in some kind of sales department, and a bit of a jetsetter as far as corporate types go. I will never know but I believe it was on account of our shared name that I was upgraded to first class when I took a business trip to Las Vegas in 1996 or 1997. Today, of course, passenger lists are surgically dissected, and for whatever reason I get the full security screening any time I fly anywhere. I wonder if the other Mark Thomas, or all Mark Thomases, get the cavity search like I do.

I had a few interactions with him when our expense checks got mixed up, as happened a few too many times for comfort. This was a bit of a problem, since the amount of money on our expense checks was often close enough in value that neither of us would look twice at it to verify the amount. This never came to pass but the scenario of me owing him money (or vice versa) was kind of bothersome.

The reason I mention that the neurologist was youngish looking was that my first thought was to ask what the hell a neurologist is doing working as a caddy on the side? I did not actually ask but he succinctly summarized the story to say that he was not presently a caddy but that it was something he did in college. With that the timeline made sense.

My name seems common enough that I would have encountered it more often than I have. I know of a car dealership somewhere in America named Mark Thomas Auto, and there is a black preacher by that name… not that I spend a lot of time troubling my head with matters of identity confusion. I discovered those Mark Thomases when I made the too-late decision to try and register a domain name like markthomas.com or whatever. All reasonably possible domains seemed to be taken last time I bothered to look.

Of course the most chilling incident involving use of my name involved a child molester who somehow became associated with the house I grew up in. I’m not even willing to rehash that horrorshow, which damn near made me throw up.

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