In my late teens, I was the secretary for my dad’s mechanic garage and
needed to call an elderly lady named Sarah to update her on her vehicle’s
status.
“Hello,” I said when she answered. “This is Sara from LaVerne’s Repair,
and I’m. . .”
“Who is this?” she
interrupted.
I slowed down, something I have to do almost consciously sometimes.
“This is Sara. I’m calling from LaVerne’s Repair.”
“Ohhh!” Her voice dripped with relief. “For a moment I thought I had
called myself.”
Now, fifteen years later, I know how she felt. I recently wrote an email
to another Sara Nolt, a person I expected to hear of sooner or later,
considering my common Mennonite name. Before her existence was verified to me,
I held the vague hope that she wouldn’t be a writer, thinking it would avoid
confusion if she had other interests, like gardening, for example. No one could
possibly confuse us then. But. . . no such luck.
“You got a check in the mail today,” my sister told me. “It is from CLP’s
Companions for a story you wrote.”
I viewed the picture she included in the text, and didn’t recognize the
title on the check stub. I hadn’t written the story. A few hopeful ideas came
to mind. Maybe CLP had extra cash to send to their contributors and fabricated
a title to fill in the blank. Or maybe the secretary’s finger twitched as she
scrolled through lists of contributors and gave a random check to me. Or perhaps
(gasp!) the confusion I feared had begun. And indeed it did. There is another
Sara Nolt who writes. She lives in Ohio, CLP told me when they apologized for
the mix-up.
A single publisher is not alone in his confusion. Several months after I
learned I had a twin, I got an email from my cousin in Belize, thanking me for a
Christmas letter I did not send. I was puzzled for a few days until her
explanation came –a flurry of words by way of apology. She has a friend, you
see, in Ohio named Sara Nolt and we had both written around the same time and
being great with child (pregnancy brain, you know), she was confused over which
Sara she was writing.
I asked my cousin for an email address and made contact with my twin. She
responded yet that day with an introduction of herself and family: She is
married and lives (surprise!) in Ohio. She does some writing, and includes her
middle initial in her byline: Sara J. Nolt.
And then she said it: “I read the book you wrote. It is a good booklet
but I admit I wish you would have done a little introduction to the author in
it. I had quite a few people thinking that I wrote it.”
I froze. It is one thing for my story on overcoming a chronic problem to
be aired publicly; it is quite another thing to taint a perfect stranger with
my besetting sin. Though they felt insufficient, I offered my apologies for causing the confusion. She
was gracious and kind –a likeable person to have as my twin. I want to meet her
someday.
To attach myself to the booklet (and free her from it), here it is: Overcoming Inferiority, for sale at
Christian Light Publications for $3.95. You can click HERE for a link to it on their
website.
