If I'm not who I think I am, who am I?

The photograph of me -- look, it's right there -- is a few years old. It's hard for me to tell if it still looks like me, because when I look in the mirror, I see this stranger who brushes his teeth when I do and shaves when I do and gets dressed when I do and gets ready for bed when I do. As far as I can tell, the fellow in the mirror is an OK kind of guy. But what do I know?

So, maybe you can understand my confusion and curiosity when complete strangers come up to me while shopping the aisles of The Store That Sells Everything and say: I recognize you from your picture in the paper.

Really?

I would probably never make that connection.

For one thing, I don't wear glasses anymore, thanks to cataract surgery. Look at the picture. See? I'm wearing glasses.

Sometimes people I knew a long time ago, maybe from my favorite hometown near Killough Valley in the Ozarks over yonder, come up to me because they recognize me from that photo. They say something like, "Do you remember me from high school?" I could say something polite like, "Sure I do, but I can't quite remember your name. It's been more than half a century, after all."

Occasionally, someone like that says, "Guess."

Well, where do I even start in such a game? So I don't play along. Instead, I say, "I don't remember you, or your name, or anything about you. Please tell me who you are."

I've told the story many times about the black cat we had for nearly 20 years named Blackie because its fur was as dark as midnight. Blackie was, for sure, a black cat.

I took Blackie for his annual checkup when we lived in Topeka. The cat was in a carrier. When I walked into the vet's waiting room, there were some other folks waiting with their pets. One chatty woman looked at Blackie and said, "Oh, what a beautiful black cat. What's its name?"

To which I replied: "Guess."

"Oh," exclaimed the woman. "What an unusual name."

Really?

Once I was in a store when a nice woman came up to me and said, "I know you. You're that writer for the Southeast Missourian, aren't you?"

Yes, I said, adding: "I'm Joe Sullivan."

"No, the other one," said the nice woman.

Really?

If I don't look like that photo there, whom do I look like? If you had never seen a picture of me, what would you think I look like? Would I be shorter? That's what one fellow told me once. "I never thought you were tall," said the nice man. "Have you always been tall?"

Really?

Maybe you, too, have tried to visualize what someone looks like, someone you know as a novelist who surely must look like some of the characters portrayed in her or his books. Then you see the photo of the author on the back cover, and you say:

Really?

My wife is a big fan of Fred Childs, amiable host of "Performance Today" on NPR. She has listened to podcasts featuring Fred Childs for years. A couple of years ago Fred Childs came to Cape Girardeau for a special event at KRCU, the local public-radio station. When the announcement was made in the Southeast Missourian that Fred Childs would speak at an event here, there also was a photograph of Fred Childs. My wife nearly choked on her morning coffee when she saw the photo. "That's NOT Fred Childs," she exclaimed.

Really?

In the past week my wife and I have visited some of the retail outlets in Cape Girardeau that feature an eclectic mix of merchandise. We find the variety of what's stocked in these stores to be nothing short of amazing. We don't usually buy much, but we enjoy looking.

After we had looked around all the aisles of this particular store, we were ready to leave the checkout area when a nice woman said, "Will this be fodder for a column?"

Yes, it might.

Really.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.