A few years back I got the weirdest call one afternoon. A girl (I could tell she was young, and found out later she was 16) called and asked if Wayne Pryor was home.
I told her he wasn’t but asked if she wanted to leave a message. She paused for a long time before asking, “Is this his wife?”
“Yes.”
Another pause, which caused a ripple of concern. Something about her hesitation seemed odd.
“How long have you been married?”
Okay, at this point a bunch of scenarios started running through my mind, and none of them were happy ones.
“A while. Why?”
“I’m looking for my father whose name is Wayne Pryor. Do you know if he was in St. Augustine in the late eighties?”
After I got over the initial shock of hearing some girl was looking for her father named Wayne Pryor and having my mind race considering if it could be my Wayne or not, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Um, no, we lived in Colorado in the eighties.”
“Oh, well, thanks for your time.”
She hung up and I immediately called Wayne.
“Hey, your daughter called here looking for you just now.”
“My what?”
“Your daughter. You have anything you want to tell me?”
I was messing with him. I knew there had to be some mistake. Either he was trying to play a trick on me, or there really was some girl looking for her dad whose name happened to be the same as my husband’s. If he was playing a trick on me I’d call his bluff. If not, I knew eventually the truth would be revealed. Until then, there was no way I could pass up the opportunity to tease him.
“I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. What’s going on? Where’s this coming from?”
I explained what had just happened and we both had a good chuckle. Even though I already knew he’d never set foot in Florida before we moved there in 1999, he assured me he had never had relations with another woman that would have resulted in a child. (Which of course gave me something new to goad him about, “But you have had relations with another woman?” Which he adamantly denied and then accused me of twisting his words. I was, but again it was a perfect opportunity to give him a hard time. Can’t pass those up!)
Anyway, “his daughter” called back a couple nights later and it was Wayne who answered the phone this time. I guess she wasn’t satisfied talking to me and wanted to make sure her Wayne Pryor and mine weren’t one and the same.
His conversation started out even weirder than mine. This was all I heard from my end.
“Yes, I’m Wayne Pryor, but, no, I’ve never been to jail.”
He ended up having a nice chat with her and found out her mom had grown up in St. Augustine and had gotten pregnant in the late eighties by a man named Wayne Pryor. But the daughter had only recently learned the man’s name. She started searching for him, only knowing two things about him: (1) his name, and (b) he’d been in prison and had recently gotten out.
It was kind of a sad story in one way and Wayne wished her the best of luck in finding what she was after.
I found the whole thing amusing. My heart did go out to the girl, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not everyday you find out (a) your husband has a doppelganger, at least in name, (b) he’s an ex con at that, and (c) he’s got a daughter.
Weird.
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