WHO’S WHO IS WHO
Ashley Martin meets Ashley Martin, and other Sask. stories of same-name confusion
I got my tonsils out when I was nine years old. When my grandma’s best friend phoned her, concerned about Ashley, she assumed that was the reason.
The details of this exchange are foggy, although I’ve repeated them time and again over the years. Was I there for the phone call? Or did I only hear about it second-hand?
In any case, here’s the conversation as it’s etched in my brain:
Bev asks: “Jackie, why didn’t you tell me about Ashley?”
Grandma replies: “You mean that she got her tonsils out?”
Bev reacts: “No, that she won a beauty contest!”
Bev had noticed a brief in the Oct. 17, 1994, edition of the LeaderPost, listing the successes of a few Regina models at the Faces West convention in Calgary.
“Ashley Martin, nine, female runway winner and third place dance winner in the ages nine to 12 category,” it read.
Except, it wasn’t me.
This is the first time I recall being mistaken for another Ashley Martin.
“I did modelling when I was really young,” the other Ashley Martin said, laughing when I brought it up a few weeks ago, the first time ever we’d actually sat down to chat.
It was our third-ever meeting, taking place at her condo — coincidentally a building I’ve walked by many times with my dog, since it’s pretty close to home.
The modelling story got shelved to the back of my mind for a long while. Nine years passed before I was able to put a face to her name.
The first time we met wasn’t even in Regina. Although we were the same age (I’m three months older) and lived just six kilometres apart, we never crossed paths.
Then in Grade 12, we were each in Winnipeg for our respective high schools’ choir retreats, which each happened to involve a Red River boat tour.
Neither of us can nail down how we happened to connect on that boat. But it’s a story we’ve each told over the years.
“I don’t even really remember our interaction, so much as just the shirt thing, that’s all I remember,” the other Ashley Martin (middle initial J.) recalled.
Me too.
Because meeting a girl who shares my name wasn’t weird enough, she was wearing the very same shirt I had just bought at Portage Place mall, an orangey, striped, wrap-style T-shirt.
“It’s funny that for it being so long ago and being just a blip — that even you and I can recall the exact same thing in detail,” she said.
I knew who she was from years before. And by this time, she knew who I was too, for something I’m not proud of — kissing a guy who had friends at her high school.
“I was friends with that group, and they were like, ‘I heard you hooked up with (him),’ and I was like, ‘I didn’t, for sure,’ ” she remembered.
“And they’re like, ‘No, for sure, Ashley Martin did,’ and I was like, ‘Not me though.’ ”
As many times as I’ve shared the tonsils/modelling account over the years, she has repeated the makeout story about a boy I’d almost completely forgotten.
“Every time, I would be like, ‘ Why would I tell that? That’s not a good story,’ ” she said. “Years later, I’m so sorry that I’ve probably told that story like 20 times.”
Now adults, occasions for confusion have continued, in doctor’s offices and social circles. On social media, we’ve received numerous friend requests and messages meant for the other. (It’s why my social media moniker is @theotherashleym.)
She has heard from Leader-Post readers who confuse her for me.
People have approached me, believing I’m her. As recently as December at Nicky’s Café, when I was serving coffee for a Leader-Post Christmas Cheer Fund fundraiser, a nice couple approached me to say hi to their son’s former caregiver at Chip & Dale Homes.
Nope, not me.
Luckily we’ve never had the confusion of working together — that was a different Ashley Martin.
It provided a couple years of mishaps when she was hired in the Leader-Post’s reader sales and service department in 2011. (I wish I had kept a record of how many times I received emails meant for her. It happened a lot.)
“I got yours too,” this Ashley Martin (middle initial R.) told me.
Six years younger than me, she grew up in Milestone, so the same-name mix-ups were kept to a minimum — although, like Ashley J. Martin, “People thought that I was writing for the Leader-Post,” said Ashley R.
We’re not sure if she’s the same Ashley Martin who applied for a job at Ashley J.’s former workplace.
“It might have been. It totally could have been,” said Ashley R.
“They were all bugging that they should hire her because it would be so funny that we have the same name,” Ashley J. said.
“I was like, ‘I already have enough troubles with another Ashley Martin.’ ”
In part, work is what brought us together for the second time, last year, at the IMAX.
She was there with some of her former co-workers — among them, a guy I know from university, who immediately told her, “I also know the other Ashley Martin.”
While chatting about our shared love of trivia and paralyzers, our unfounded anxieties, our habits of perpetually running five minutes late, the conversation turned to marriage. Specifically: Do you plan on changing your last name? I’m a hard no.
The other Ashley Martin probably won’t be Ashley Martin forever, though.
“I feel very traditional in that way I guess. I’ve never really thought about why I wouldn’t,” she said.
Still, she has some reservations. With three older brothers, “that also feels a little bit sad almost — that I’m the only one that won’t be a Martin if I change my name.”
Sharing a name used to bother me, always being mistaken for another person — not just her or my former Leader-Post colleague, but a few other Ashley Martins who apparently don’t know their email addresses.
Just last week, I had messages from Philadelphia’s Villanova University about an Ashley Martin’s interest in the applied project management certificate, and from Saint James School in Montgomery, Ala., where an Ashley Martin’s child is a student.
There have been emails about car purchases, Domino’s Pizza delivery orders, other university applications, an apartment lease and a job application.
Annoying ? Yes. But I’ve learned to embrace my common first and last names — Ashley was the second-most popular baby girl’s name in the year of my birth, and Martin had just over 200 entries in the Regina Henderson’s Directory that year.
In a city the size of Regina, it’s easy enough to be confused if you share a name.
Try shrinking your community to solely musicians. Then, a very specific genre of music.
This is the Dan Silljers’ experience.
Daniel M. Silljer is artistic director of the Regina Blues Association and a CJTR radio show host.
Daniel A. Silljer is a rock and blues guitarist who has played gigs in Regina since the late 1990s.
It wasn’t so confusing back then, because the younger Dan used to go by “Danny Silljer.”
Still, the elder Dan remembered, “Somebody had heard (about a concert) and called me and said, ‘Are you playing somewhere?’ And I’m going, ‘Playing what?’ ”
At this year’s Mid-Winter Blues Festival, Dan Silljer introduced Dan Silljer on a stage — granted, he presented the band, The Treefellers, and not the individual.
Both being involved in music, the two Dan Silljers — who are first cousins, once removed — have been mistaken for one another often enough.
“It used to be really bad before cellphones,” said Dan M., “because I was the only Dan Silljer listed in the phone book, so I’d get lots of his phone calls and have to forward them on.
“Once I was trying to book somebody for a show … who at the same time was trying to get Dan to go out and do some shows with him, and we confused the heck out of that poor guy.”
“This one dude who phoned me one time,” Dan A. recalled, “he was relentless. He insisted that I was the person he was looking for. I’m like, ‘Buddy, you’ve got the wrong guy, trust me. I know who I am.’ ”
But sharing a name hasn’t proven that bothersome, aside from handling their respective accounts at Long & McQuade music store.
“Once or twice it’s been just kind of a hiccup, nothing really annoying,” said Dan A. “I haven’t received any of his bills or anything like that. And I hope he hasn’t received any of mine.”
“I always found it funny,” said Dan M. Besides, it has worked out for his artistic-director job: With musicians phoning him looking for the other Dan, he has been able to book them for gigs.
Worth noting, these are not the only two Dan Silljers around — there’s at least one more, who is also a distant relative of theirs.
You don’t have to be in the same city — or even in the same hemisphere — to be confused for a person, though.
Matt Duguid knows that well enough.
There is another Matt Duguid in Regina and they’ve met once before, but it’s a different Matt Duguid with whom he’s had frequent run-ins.
This Matt Duguid lives near Wellington, New Zealand, and Facebook brought them together.
“People kept mis-tagging us and stuff,” said Regina Matt. “So we kept having to trade each other, like, ‘This isn’t me, this is you.’ ”
Even though they look nothing alike and have little in common, their respective friends still tag the other in posts. “Just last month I was getting tagged in ultramarathon pics from New Zealand,” said Regina Matt, who has no inclination to run a marathon.
The two Matt Duguids developed a friendship this way and, in January 2017, met in person, when Regina Matt was travelling in that part of the world.
New Zealand Matt Duguid cooked lamb and grilled halloumi, and “he was super nice and it was just a super cool way to have a friendly face around the globe.”
It felt like “extended family almost.”
They might be actual family, a long way back, since each of their ancestors came from the same area of Scotland.
Without the internet, this wouldn’t have happened, Regina Matt recognizes.
“We’d have never been confused in the first place, right? Nobody would look in the phone book and be like, ‘Oh New Zealand Matt Duguid, is this the same guy from Regina, Sask.?’ No way.’ ”
Nicole Petrisor only had to cross the street to find her same-named person — although she’d been aware of her before and even received a few of her emails by mistake.
While working at the LeaderPost, Petrisor went for lunch to Moxie’s one day and was taken aback when she pulled out her credit card to pay.
“They said, ‘Nichole Petrisor, did she give you her card?’ I’m like, ‘No this is my card.’ ”
Believe it or not, it wasn’t all that confusing when Nicole Petrisor began serving part-time at the restaurant where Nichole Petrisor was a manager.
“I was never Nicole, I was always ‘the other Nicole,’ ” said Nicole. “And a lot of clarifying, like, ‘Oh, which one are you talking about?’ So she got to be the default because she was there already and everybody knew her, and I was the other.”
Like the Matt Duguids, social media united Regina resident Kirk Morrison with his more famous counterpart, former NFL football player and current ESPN broadcaster Kirk Morrison.
“It kind of came to a head when I signed up for Twitter, I had the @kirkmorrison handle and then I started getting messages from people thinking that I was him,” said Regina Kirk Morrison.
They met in 2011 as, in exchange for the Twitter handle, NFL-er Kirk’s team treated Regina Kirk and his brother Kent to their first NFL experience, a Buffalo Bills game.
The trio hung out again during a trip to Los Angeles last year.
A former Global Regina reporter, Kent wrote a great story about the two Kirks in January, as the Bills were in the playoffs.
NFL Kirk “affectionately refers to me as his brother from another mother,” Regina Kirk said.
“It’s such a unique thing that 10 years ago wouldn’t have come about,” he added, “but it was all because of Twitter and social media aliases, and it’s crazy to think how these relationships can be formed in ways like that.”
Saskatoon resident Brad Wall shares more than a name with his more famous counterpart.
Like former premier Brad J. Wall, Brad E. Wall grew up in Swift Current, where they both attended Swift Current Comprehensive High School.
“Our lives never really crossed paths; I think just because of the age gap, we were in different activities in school,” said non-politico Brad Wall, who is four years older.
The ex-premier was mistaken for this Brad Wall in 2008, when the Globe & Mail wrote that the premier was a provincial hurdles champion — the reporter had noted a championship banner hanging in the school gym when he visited Wall in his hometown.
“For the record, that was a much more athletic Brad Wall,” thenpremier Brad Wall clarified in a letter to the editor.
Another time, an Ontario radio station phoned Brad E. Wall to ask him about his recent election.
Usually, though, the mix-ups run the other way.
“I’ve had quite a few phone calls from people that have been angry at various government policies. … I try to convince them that I’m not really the right guy,” said Brad E. Wall, one of at least two Brad Walls who live in Saskatoon.
“When I hand my credit card over to a hotel, for example, they almost always give me a second look.”
As a high school teacher, Brad Wall has heard jokes about his name.
“My students think it’s funny,” he said. “They call me ‘the premier’ sometimes.”
He’s grateful the other Brad Wall was a mostly well-liked leader: “If his tenure had been something else, then it would have been much more of a burden to bear.”
When it comes to name-related jokes, Michael Jackson knows all about it.
The Anglican Church deacon and former provincial protocol officer shares a name with the nowdeceased pop superstar.
Back in musician-Michael Jackson’s heyday, this resulted in a lot of fun at the Regina man’s expense.
During a visit to Victoria, Helen Jackson’s husband was meeting in their hotel bar with the B.C. protocol officer when she got a call that their driver was on his way.
Phoning down to relay the message, she got some snark from the bartender: “‘Oh yeah, is this Priscilla?’” he asked, alluding to the pop star’s mother-in-law.
Michael Jackson remembers “a lot of prank calls” — people asking for a song, or asking if he could moonwalk (he can’t).
At St. Paul’s Cathedral 20-some years ago, a woman promised her granddaughter she would meet Michael Jackson at church.
“This little girl looked me up and down and said very sadly, ‘You’re not Michael Jackson.’ It was funny,” said the reverend, who is not a fan of pop music.
In the movie Office Space, the character Michael Bolton has a similar experience, enduring endless jokes about sharing a pop star’s name. Even so, he’d never change it: “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”
But a name may not be all that important. After all, as Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
And if that’s your belief, there’s always eHealth Saskatchewan, where a legal name change is as simple as a $135 fee.