box office from another planet

[calimac]

I had a particularly surreal experience at the box office of the concert I reviewed last night. I arrived at the window and said, as I usually do, "There should be a ticket for me" and gave my last name. The fellow behind the window went off to look for it.

Usually, in these circumstances, when the person comes back, they say my first name in a tone of query, just to confirm it's the right ticket. Only this guy didn't say my name, he said "Bruce?" I said, "No, David," and he said, "It is [last name], though?" I said "Yes" and he went off again, leaving me to wonder who this Bruce with my rare surname who also attends classical music concerts might be.

He came back and said, "All we have is this," showing me tickets with a blank on which was handwritten my full name and "SFCV." I said, "That's me." He asked how I'd ordered the tickets, and I said, "I'm the reviewer for San Francisco Classical Voice. My editor would have phoned the request in." He said, "Just let me confirm this with the director."

While he was off this time, a woman came to the window and asked, "You're a reviewer with a paper?" I said, "With San Francisco Classical Voice. It said 'SFCV' on the receipt the man showed me." She nodded and seemed to understand.

Then the fellow returned, said it was OK and handed me the tickets, but asked, "Just one question: what's your relationship with this David?" I said, "I'm David." He said, "Oh, I thought you said your name was Bruce." "No," I said, "you said Bruce. I said, 'No, David.'"

So I don't know what planet my tickets came from, possibly the planet of the Bruces (Norstrilia?), but at least I got the tickets.

Comments

[athenais]

Gracious, that's fussy and confusing of them.

[shewhomust]

Lowering the tome of this conversation somewhat, the only other person I know who is sometimes Bruce and sometimes David is the Incredible Hulk...

[calimac]

Superheroes being a topic I know little of, I knew that the Hulk was Bruce, but when is he David? When I looked it up, all I found was David Duchovny having been considered to play the part in a movie.

[shewhomust]

He was always Bruce Banner in the comics, but when they were first adapted for television, the network didn't like the name (allegedly they thought it was 'a bit gay') so they made him David. Subsequnt versions have tried to smooth out the anomaly - sometines he's Bruce David (or it may have been David Bruce, I wan't paying that much attention).