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Identity Theft - An Open Invitation
- by Sunny Nainai-

There’s been an awful lot in the news these days about identity theft – people who, by using Social Insurance Numbers gleaned from the internet or PIN numbers stolen from bank machines or credit card applications stolen from garbage cans to “steal” a person’s identity and run off with all of that person’s money and/or leaving their credit in a shambles.

I, however, am more than happy to have someone walk off with my identity. The proviso being that, if you’re stealing my financial identity, you have to take the rest of my identity with you.

Here is your job. You work at a documentary production company producing a series for one of the country’s largest broadcasting conglomerates. The series was, until you came along, produced by another producer and has a set formula, budget, and crew that you have to learn. It has done well and won awards so everything you do from here on in will be measured up against the past seasons. Also, because it is in its umpteenth season, there isn’t much new ground to break so some of your episodes are likely to be either very dull or almost impossible to produce due to lack of interview subjects or information. You have eight episodes to produce and you have to manage interviews, re-enactments, scripts, editing, footage finding, etc. Your budget, as far as these things go, is on the small side. Your resources? You have a team of two (a researcher and a coordinator), an overworked re-enactments team of eight, maybe nine people, an overworked ex-series producer who has about 10,000 other things on her plate including two series and one one-off documentary of her own. You have a nice office, though.

Because you came of age in the ‘80s you loved the video for “Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. 20 years later you still can’t be steered away from overalls over tank-tops.

This is your house. Did I say it was yours? Oops, I meant the bank’s. You own the basement, which is infested with spiders and a complete mess. Every time you get it into your head to clean down there, you get freaked out and go for beer. The roof (which is not yet yours) needs reshingling and the bathroom needs some work. The house is a “character” house, which in common parlance means that the layout is weird, the rooms are small and the plumbing and electrical are probably going to need overhauling soon as well. There are no closets, just indentations in the wall high enough for a short eight-year-old to stand in and nowhere near big enough to fit your clothes and your kids’ clothes in.

Which brings me to your kids. You have two. They’re both girls and both under the age of 6 (5 and 4, actually). They’re very sweet and smart but having two same-gender kids so close in age means that they will gang up on you fairly frequently. They have very specific eating habits, like movies and/or videos that are extremely irritation to anyone who isn’t a little girl and crawl into bed with you at 4 AM, take up ľ of the space in the bed and kick off your covers. Between clothes, food, housing and child care, they’ll eat up at least ľ of your paycheque from the documentary company where you now work. And they hate, I repeat, hate, having their hair brushed, but both want their hair long. Go figure…

Your new family will help you immensely with the kids, but they’re a lot of work as well. You have two brothers, both younger but bigger, and one likes to pick you up and throw you into snow banks. Your new mom will worry that you’re working too hard and don’t eat enough. You new dad will give you a disappointed look if you drink anything with booze in it that is “too girly” and can’t figure out how a daughter of his can grow up not liking scotch. You’ve tried it, you really have, but can’t get why drinking anything that tastes like dirt is a good thing. You like wine, beer, gin and vodka primarily (not together) and have the alcohol tolerance of an anorexic midget, so you have to be very careful. The good news is that if you want to get drunk, only two or three drinks will get you there.

This is your wardrobe (the one that won’t fit in your tiny closets that belong to the bank). Your fashion sense has been influenced by a few unfortunate things:

  1. You came of age in the ‘80s
  2. Because you came of age in the ‘80s you loved the video for “Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. 20 years later you still can’t be steered away from overalls over tank-tops.
  3. You are average height but skinny except your legs. You like to hide that fact by buying jeans that are 4 sizes to big for you. Your best friend? A collection of belts.
  4. Your feet are a size 10 women’s. This means that most shoes that look great in a size 7 look like either wicked witch shoes or shit-kickers. You can’t walk in heels, either, so don’t even try.
  5. Because you’ve had two kids, you boobs only look ok if they are properly restrained and held up. Most of today’s fashions, therefore, are off-limits due to the fact that you can’t and shouldn’t go without a bra. Another good reason for fashion point number two.

You do have a reasonably nice car but it, like everything else you “own”, belongs to the bank. And it’s a Saturn, so your friends occasionally call you a yuppie.

And about your new friends – they are many and varied. You don’t see them as often as you’d like because of your kids/work schedule. You e-mail them and talk to them on the phone but really only see them once a week when your ex-common-law-husband has the kids. You’re probably more up to date with the gang on Sex and the City or Trailer Park Boys than you are with your real flesh and blood friends, but you’ll all get caught up when you all retire and your kids move out.

As for taking my money? There is none, but I guess you’ve figured that out now. So enjoy your new identity, and since you’re not using yours anymore, maybe I’ll take it. It would be a nice changing having money I didn’t work for and that doesn’t get eaten up by taxes and responsibility. I’ll be in the Cayman Islands drinking a Mai Tai if you want to talk about switching back.

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