I walked into one of the county offices where I work, and the receptionist, a lady I’ll call “C”, was slumped at her desk behind the bullet-proof window where she works with the fine clientele she deals with every day. She looked like she’d had a long day already, and it was only 10 AM or thereabouts.
I asked her what was up, and she laughed tiredly and said, “A client came in and claimed to be Jesus Christ.”
I started laughing. “That’s pretty funny,” I said.
She smiled a bit and said, “I just kept asking him to tell me his real name, and he just kept insisting it was ‘Jesus Christ.'”
“Maybe it’s pronounced ‘HAY-soos!‘” I suggested, and laughed harder.
She laughed with me, but after a minute she drew in enough breath to continue the story. “So I had to look him up in the computer. Guess what I found? There were two ‘Jesus Christs” in there!”
Tears came to my eyes. “Two of them!”
I couldn’t stop laughing now. I had to sit down in a vacant chair. “You should have asked him what his middle initial was! My dad always insisted it was ‘Jesus H. Christ!'”
C turned to the computer, the search screen still up. “No middle initial listed.” She continued, “Yeah, so I had to figure out which one he was…” I knew where she was going.
When there’s multiple names in the database, the next question the fine county folk ask is the person’s birthday. To narrow down which one is which.
“So…” I prompted her.
‘C’ smiled even wider. “So I asked him. And, of course, it was December 25th.”