My Very Own Sherlockian Mystery (or just a story of forgetfulness)

I believe there has been a tear in the time-space continuum, creating an alternative timeline for my life.  I have proof.

Back on Halloween, I opened an old book and a piece of paper came out.  It had a name scrawled on it, sort of like I was writing myself a reminder to call the person.  Let’s change some facts around so this isn’t Google-able and make the name Dan Wumplemeyer.

“Dan Wumplemeyer,” I said aloud to Josh.  “How do I know the name Dan Wumplemeyer?”

He shrugged and continued watching television, but I was suddenly bothered by the name Dan Wumplemeyer.  It felt important.  So I Googled Dan and found his Facebook page.  We had many, many, many people in common, but the person didn’t look familiar at all.  The friends we had in common also weren’t related; it wasn’t as if I knew them all from one place.  Two people were from college and had moved to DC.  Another was from high school.  One was from a women’s group I belonged to when I first moved back to DC, and another was from a different women’s group that I joined when the first group fell apart.  Everyone else was a mishmash of people from various stages of my life.

I scrolled down through his pictures, and I started to see more people I knew but wasn’t friends with on Facebook.  Yet no other clues that let me know why I had a note to call Dan Wumplemeyer.

So I searched my email and found that he had been included on group emails I sent out after the twins were born.  Really intimate emails that were only sent to a close set of friends.  So at one time, I considered Dan Wumplemeyer a close friend… AND I HAD ZERO CLUE HOW I KNEW HIM.  There was nothing familiar about him; no memories tied to the person except a feeling that he had been present this one night my friend and I went to see Dave Eggers speak at a church.

Had he been dating my friend?  My brain told me that wasn’t correct — that my friend was single at the time because he had just broken up with his longtime boyfriend — but that was the only memory where Dan Wumplemeyer fit.  And he didn’t even fit well in that memory.  It was sort of like tossing a fork in with a bunch of spoons.

I went to bed and thought about Dan Wumplemeyer and the fact that I couldn’t place him.

Days passed and I had to search my email for something for work.  It pulled up the correct email, but it also pulled up other emails that contained the same keyword.  One of those emails was to an old childhood friend who… well… this is also a strange story.

At some point when the kids were little, we started going to a farm about 45 minutes away.  Why did we skip the 3000 farms between our house and this farm?  I don’t know.  But the farm owner had a hex on her barn that I loved.  When I asked about it, it turned out that my childhood friend had painted the hex!  It was a random connection — none of us lived close enough to one another to meet except by chance.  The farm owner reconnected me to this childhood friend — we’ll call her Dottie Stickelcake — and we had a few emails back and forth.

I was feeling nostalgic and decided to open Dottie’s email and re-read it before I went back to working.  In it we talked about the barn hex and various people we both knew.  And then, on the third email back and forth, I started talking about DAN WUMPLEMEYER!  I told her a story about Dan and mentioned that he had dated a man named Bernie Scratchbottom (also not his real name), who had gone to high school with us.

Who was Bernie Scratchbottom?  I had no memory of a Bernie Scratchbottom, even though Dottie and I exchanged two more emails with stories about Bernie.  I went and got my high school yearbook and looked up Bernie Scratchbottom.  There was no one at our school with that name.  I looked in older copies of the yearbook in case he wasn’t in my grade.  But there were no Bernie Scratchbottoms at our high school during any of the years I attended.  Though this random email exchange spoke about Bernie as if we hung out together all the time.

I mentioned all of this to the ChickieNob, mostly because I was worried that my memory was going until I hit this bizarre Bernie Scratchbottom snag.  She listened and then nodded seriously.  “Dan Wumplemeyer is probably a Key, just like Dawn in Buffy.”  I needed to read the Wikipedia entry to understand:

Characters accepted Dawn’s presence as if she had always been there, and as if Buffy always had a sister, with only the audience aware that this was not the case. As the series went on, the significance of Dawn’s arrival is revealed to the series’ other characters, and they come to understand that she has not always been Buffy’s sister, or indeed a sentient being; Dawn had originally been the mystical “key” to unlocking dimensions and was made into Buffy’s sister so the Slayer would protect her.

So Dan Wumplemeyer is unlocking other dimensions.

Makes total sense.

The coda to this story is that as I wrote this entry, I decided to Google and see if the farm was still there since it has been at least 10 years since I last visited.  It is, but even more bizarre, the front of the farm site has a note about our handyman.  (Remember, this farm is about 45 minutes from our home.)  He is apparently the brother of the farm owner, and she put up a little ad for his services even though he lives in my town and not hers.  This is just like Dirk Gently.

Everything is connected.  Even Dan Wumplemeyer and me.