I’m 17ish living in Connecticut.
I go away to MIT (Musicians Institute) home of GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology and BIT (Bass Institute of Technology) and become this hotshot guitarist out in California. Mark Sarzo (last name changed to protect the innocent) uses my name to hold a guitar clinic at Caruso Music hoping to make bank. He plays a little guitar and we looked exactly like each other back in the little league baseball days. People used to mix us up for each other constantly. Ironic that not only did we become friends but played in a couple bands together during junior high school too.
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So apparently Sarzo had every intention of trying to teach this clinic. There were flyers all over town on telephone poles, and ads in all the local papers and magazines.
Well I’m home from vacation at the time and, catching wind of it I figure out what’s going on pretty quickly. First I was angry and hurt and confused but then a little flattered. I meditate on it and decide to show up and teach the clinic.
Is this the silliest story you've EVER read???
It’s well attended and we do make bank. Richie Caruso comes over and hands me a huge check. Mark Sarzo comes up to me and apologizing, he explains what happened and tells me some story about something really heart wrenching that I don’t know maybe it really has happened so I tell him I’ll cut him two checks from this one, half for himself and then the other half is one that he has to hand deliver to Mr. Day at Claude Chester grade school for their once a week soup kitchen. Mark Sarzo thanks me and keeps apologizing over and over until I insist I’ve already forgiven him and please stop.
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OK so what’s extra funny about this dream is that much of this is based in reality. I really did play Little League baseball with this Mark Sarzo (different last name of course) We did both play guitar and in fact he knew the principal of Claude Chester and we used to rehearse there Wednesday nights because Sarzo was in fact friends with Mr. Day.
He never defrauded me, I never donated half a clinic’s worth of money to the soup kitchen there, although I volunteered there a few times, and also my last year of high school I mentored little kids there for our school’s Key Club.
Needless to say I woke happy, content and at the same time just a little bit perplexed.