Intellectually, each of us knows that there are probably other people in the world who share our name, unless it’s a very unusual one. I’ve gotten used to the fact there are various other Edward Willetts (both living and dead) and Ed Willetts.
But it was a shock today to discover that there is also another Eddie Willett, who is probably much younger than me (I hate that) since he seems to be teaching computer animation, a field that didn’t even exist at the time I would have had to be studying it in order to be teaching it now. (Some of my college friends studied computer programming. They studied things like FORTRAN and COBOL. Brrr.)
I was “Eddie” until I had worked at the Weyburn Review for a couple of years and decided I needed a more mature-sounding name for my byline. It’s been useful because if someone whose face I don’t recognize stops me on the street and calls me “Eddie,” I can make a pretty good guess that it’s someone who knew me in Weyburn, and most likely someone who knew me as a kid. (Either that or it’s my mother, but I can usually recognize her without too much prompting…)
At least, as far as I can tell, I am the one and only “Edward Chane Willett.”
