Cragshire

Often people who come in, when they ask about me or where I'm from they are too nice or old for me to feel Oll Korrect about tricking them. Or they end up being from Santa Fe or they're English teachers and I want to talk about things that we really have in common. Really I need to draw people in and make them ask about me without my having to bring it up. The best way to do that is to have a fake accent; that makes people want to know where you're from. But the only fake accent I can do passably is an English one and it seems like a dozen English people came in today and they'd spot me as a fake too easily.

Really the whole reason this idea is so appealing to me is that I was hugely successful at faking Englishness a couple years ago for a shift at my first job. I was working at a Wherehouse Records and was doing an English accent just to be obnoxious to my two coworkers. One thing led to another and soon I was being dared to try my act out on every person I helped for the rest of the day.

To say that it was well recieved is to understate. People loved it. I got the sexiest eye from the hottest girl. Adding an English accent to your persona ramps up your sex appeal by about a hundred points.

The best part was when this woman tried to call me on it. Her ten year old daughter told me she liked my accent, but then her mother fixed me with a skeptical squint.

"That's a very unusual accent. Where are you from?"

My coworkers both stifled laughs in their noses and ducked behind the counter to crack up. Figuring I was "In for a penny in for a pound" or whatever the English (me) would say I decided to fake it up hardcore.

"I'm from a small town called Cragshire."

"Oh really? Where is that in relation to Kent?"

She was good. London I could fake, but where the hell is Kent? She threw me.

"Left. Ha ha, I mean east. East of Kent. Twenty miles east of Kent."

For one thing, nobody confuses left with east. Second, I was sure, as my father was later when I told him this story, that she was going to nab me by tartly replying "East of Kent is in the ocean. Love."

But she didn't. She just squinted a little harder and moved on. I hadn't given up on lying, and lying didn't give up on me. This is the stuff this blog should be made of. And it will be. I will steel myself. High quality faking will start happening soon. Watch this space.

RC Cola Executive

I got off to an inauspicious start today with my plan to play off a fake identity on somebody who came into the winery where I work. What I wanted to do was have somebody mention they were from Arizona, and then I would say something to the effect of "Oh, really? Where?" Then if they told me Flagstaff I would say I had worked in Pheonix for a time, and if the told me they were from Pheonix, I'd claim Flagstaff. We usually have a fair number of Arizonans come through and they are invariably from one or the other of these cities. Then I was going to say I had been there for only six months or so working at setting up a regional HQ for RC Cola. Then I would ad-lib about RC Cola and make it look like I wasn't aware I was giving the impression that RC Cola was areally rinky-dink operation. For example I am comically young to be as high up in the RC organization as I would claim. Also, I would act like I thought moving 100,000 cases of soda nationwide in a month was spectacular. Hilarious!

But nobody from Arizona came in and I wasn't comfortable claiming any other state. There was a point where I was speaking for a long time with some Floridians and I was going to go into my schtick and say I was in Orlando or some damn thing. But then they told me they were visiting Napa in honor of a wine loving friend of theirs who had died in a car accident a month ago and I felt bad.

Finally at the end of the day as I was pouring for my final pair of people (we had just locked the doors) I figured I'd better go for it.

"Where are you two from?" I asked.
"Louisiana."
"Oh really?! Where in Lousiana?" I said as though surprised.
"Baton Rouge."
"Oh sure. Actually, I was working in New Orleans for about six months for trying to set up a regional office for RC Cola of all things."
"Oh yes?" The woman asked.
"Royal Crown, you know," I added archly. Then I had to go pour for some other people and when I came back that couple was ready to go pretty much. So it really wasn't inventing a personality so much as just telling a pointless lie.

So Here's the Plan:

I finally thought of why this blog should be existing. I work at a winery visitor's center. I pour wine all day and talk with people, often about their lives and sometimes my life. I think that for an indefinite period of time I will begin faking an identity at least once a day, every day at work. I will report on that fake identity and how it went here. My next day at work will be Friday, so expect an update then.

Also I should get a new photograph of me wearing a disguise or something for my profile. Because this website will be about disguises and personal fakeness.

Also I shoud get a new name for this website.

Pets

So this blog has sat here a few days, with no reason to exist. I thought maybe it would be about how I wanted to steal a baby crow and raise it, and about my (hilarious) attempts to do so. But then I thought that a crow would be messy or stinking. Also, I found a salamander in my grandmother's pool the other day and I put it in a glass with some leaves and water and the next day it was dead. So that put a damper on wanting a pet.

Speaking of pets, I was in a pet store the other day looking at the fish and an excited kid came up to me and told me he had gotten a shrimp and that I should go look because there were still a lot more left. "It has suckers just like a sucker fish, to eat algae. It was looking at some algae when we bought it." We started talking about the lizards and he told me he had some alligator lizards and I said that mine had always been mean. He said his weren't and that he just let them out to climb all over him, pantomiming with his hands.

Maybe I should get a kid as a pet.

Or one of that kid's nice lizards.