Allan´s Weblog

Have you ever tried ego-surfing?

By ego-surfing I mean googling your own name.

This subject has a prehistory. For about 10 years ago I came walking down a street in my local neighborhood. Suddenly a guy calls out for me from the pavement on the other side of the street - "Hi Allan", he yells. I greet him as he approaches me from the other side - and he grabs my hand, saying how nice it is to see me and that it´s been a long time and so on and so forth. Only problem is that I have no clue whatsoever as to who he is. I don´t remember ever having seen the bloke before.

He kept on talking, asking me what I was doing in this city. "Well", I said - "I live here" He started looking puzzled, saying that he´s really surprised to hear this - since noone had informed him about my moving away. I then told him that I had been living around here for the last eight years or so. And that I frankly didn´t remember ever having seen him before.

"Your name is Allan, right?", he asked.

I agreed it was.

"Allan Vestergaard Nielsen?" he asked.

I agreed again.

"And you´re a social educator?"

Yes, sir. That too.

"And you´re living in the town of Hundested?"

"No", I said - "as a matter of facts I´ve never been there in my life"

Then he looked very puzzled - asked me to excuse him for intruding and left me on the spot - looking back several times as he went away.
I thought of that for a couple of days, and then more or less forgot about the situation - putting it down into my mental drawer containing strange things impossible to explain.

Tonight I watched a TV-programme about people sharing the same name meeting and finding out that they just might have more than the name in common. The question asked by the programme was, whether having a certain name would make a certain impact on your personality.

Because of that programme, I got to think of this old doppelganger incident of mine - and since the internet has become widespread since the time of the incident, I just thought I´d try to egosurf my name. And behold - in the whole wide internet there are only two individuals sharing my name. The other guy is called Allan Vestergaard Nielsen, he´s a social educator just like me - and he´s working at an institution in the town of Hundested.

Now I have to think. Is it possible that two people sharing a name can become brothers in spirit - maybe even look alike - just because of a name.

Isn´t this spooky?

I have his phone number. Should I call? Dare I call?