Attorney: I was googling you recently to find an article you wrote and I found out there's someone else out there with your name who is kind of famous.

Eli: What do you mean?

Attorney: When I googled "Eli McCann" some stuff came up for an attorney also named Eli McCann and that person is apparently some kind of celebrity.

Eli: Oh. Well, I'm definitely not a celebrity, but I do have a small web presence outside of lawyering so I guess you have discovered that.

Attorney: So . . . you're saying the stuff I saw was actually about you?

Eli: Yeah. I hope you didn't go back too far. Or read too much. Some of it is probably embarrassing now that I think about it.

Attorney: You dated Britney Spears?


Eli: Yeah . . .wait. What?

Attorney: I'm talking about a TMZ article that came up with some blurry photo of Britney Spears with a mystery guy and then like hundreds of people in the comments told TMZ that the picture was of an attorney named Eli McCann.

Eli: Oh my gosh. No. I thought you had found my site or storytelling podcast.

Attorney: Ok. That's what I thought. Those comments were clearly not about you then.

Eli: Um . . . well . . . actually, they were about me.

Attorney: So you did date Britney Spears?

Eli: No. Just a whole bunch of people said I did.

Attorney: So you are really famous.

Eli: Definitely not.

Attorney: But hundreds of people wrote to TMZ to tell them that they were aware of a rumor that you were dating Britney Spears. You are obviously famous enough for that to happen.

Eli: No--it was because--this is hard to explain--the people who read my blog are . . . well . . . you know what. I am that famous. Good point.

So, I had kind of forgotten about this. And reading through the comments again just made me so happy.

I love Strangers.

~It Just Gets Stranger