Who the F**K is texting me?!

It was a Thursday night, around 9pm, and I was sitting on my couch at home, watching TV alone after smoking an entire joint, when I received a peculiar text message from a weird iCloud account I didn’t recognize.

“Hello. Is this Tyler???” asked ‘sashadibiasi@icloud.com’ (last name changed for anonymity). “Hi, it is! Who am I speaking with?” I responded. “Sasha” is all I got back.

I thought maybe this was my friend Sasha, a talented artist and long-time friend who lives in Vancouver, so I replied back “In Vancouver??” To which my new acquaintance just answered “Huh?”. Right. Of course this wasn’t the Sasha I’m familiar with; I already have her phone number saved, know her last name is nothing close to “dibiasi”, and could just tell by the way she was responding. I started racking my brain, trying to think of any other Sashas that I may know. There’s an old basketball buddy, but there’s no way this was him. There’s a friend’s ex-girlfriend, but I think she spelt her name differently. I was all out of Sashas.

At this point, I just asked, “Which Sasha am I speaking to?”. “Sasha DiBiasi” they replied. Of course. Then, a moment later, “The one that goes to your school?” Now, this is where things get interesting. You see, I haven’t gone to school in well over a decade, this needless to say, I was starting to get confused and, to be quite honest, a little frustrated.

That’s when this Sasha DiBiasi character apologized and assured me she was messaging the wrong Tyler, that she wasn’t looking to me, she was looking for Tyler Lemco. The only issue with that is, I’m Tyler Lemco. She went on to explain that she has me as a contact on Messenger Kids, where I absolutely do not have an account.

Ah, this must have something to do with an old client of mine, ClassDojo, I figured. I set up a bunch of their Facebook pages a couple of years ago, and my account must still be linked to their back-end. This must be a parent or something trying to contact the home education service for support. I asked Sasha if this had anything to do with ClassDojo, to which she replied “No I don’t think so.”

“Send me a pic of you if you are comfortable doing it” she requested, “I just want to see who you are.” At this point, I was pretty annoyed, and fought off the urge to reply “Google me, bitch.” After all, Lemco is not a common name. There’s maybe 6 or 7 of us in the world, and I know that I’m the only Tyler of the bunch. Instead, I used my best adult language to reply “Can I ask what this is pertaining to?” That was met with a simple yet aggravating “wdym”, an acronym for “What do you mean?”

Without a second thought, I jolted into lawyer mode, shooting back “Well, I’m wondering who you are and why you’re messaging me because I’m not on Messenger Kids, nor do I go to any school, so I’m just wondering if I can know some context to see if I can understand what’s going on here.” Sasha quickly sent back a message: “Ok sorry, wrong Tyler”…

Sorry wasn’t going to cut it. If someone is out there using my name and number, then that isn’t good. I let Sasha know that I take identity theft very seriously and if my identity is being stolen then I need to get to the bottom of this. Then she explained, “No just cause I have a friend named Tyler Lemcovitch but people call him Tyler Lemco so I thought this would be him but it isn’t so could you please delete me. I hope I’m not being mean or anything.”

Oh. I’ve been talking to a 9-year old girl, who goes to school with my cousin, Tyler Lemcovitch. Oops.

I warned my cousin Jamie, when he asked if I’d be cool with him naming his son Tyler all those years ago, that I’d love that but he should know that I already have all the e-mail and social accounts reserved for my name. I hadn’t thought about it since then, but here we are; the first instance of what I’m sure will turn out to be many Tyler Lemco mix-ups. I guess I’m not the only one anymore.

Cousin Tyler, if you’re reading this, Sasha is looking for you.