How Many of You Are There?

Back at her home blog, Deborah links to a nifty site that tells you how many people in America have the same first and last name as you. It turns out there are 228 Thomas Hiltons--so it shouldn't have been any great shock when I started cite-checking a brief in a new case the other day and saw that the first name on the list of defendants was Thomas Hilton. (Different middle initial, though.)

It also reminded me of many years ago when I moved to Oakland and had to get a new phone number. They assigned me one--893-4852--and told me it would be hooked up by Thursday. On Wednesday, just out of curiosity, I called information and asked for Tom Hilton. To my surprise, they had a number; to my irritation, they had transposed the digits: 893-5482. I fulminated about the incompetence of the phone company until a couple of days later, when I called information again and asked for my name. The operator asked me which Tom Hilton–the one on Laurel, or the one on East 14th? Not only was there another Tom Hilton in Oakland, but his phone number was the same as mine with some digits transposed. I always imagined him as being everything I wasn’t–rich, ambitious, Republican, all that sort of thing.

Fortunately for the continued existence of the universe, Evil Tom Hilton and I never met.

[That's all, folks]