This postLast week I got a Facebook friend request from Ben Crowder. “That’s weird,” I thought. “Somebody must’ve hacked into the system and is trying to masquerade as me. I wonder what e-mail address they’re using and whether they’re linking to my sites and what picture they’ve got up…”
Turns out there really are other Ben Crowders in the world (oh, naive me!), and this one happened to be back East. I wrote him a message and it was goosebumpy weirdness to hear back from him. How can I describe it? Imagine that one day you wake up and there’s a knock at the door, and when you open it you find yourself standing on the step. What kind of a conversation would you have? It’s mind-boggling.
Well, this Ben Crowder isn’t actually a clone — in fact, about the only thing we have in common is our name — but it felt eery nonetheless. After reading his message, an irresistible urge to google around for other Ben Crowders fell upon me. I first checked out Facebook and found five other Ben Crowders, and then on Google I found a few more (and there was some overlap, by the way). It’s my quest now to contact all the Ben Crowders in the world, or at least try. Maybe someday we can have a Ben Crowder conference. LOL :)
