A case of mistaken identity. Remember this from my request for hugs and whuffles on Monday?→[More:]

2) One of my former students last week confided in me that he was housing a friend of his who, it turned out, was wanted for murder. I didn't believe the guy at first (he tells some tall tales, let's say) until I read about his friend in the newspaper the next day. So I wondered if I was going to get a call from the cops and whether it was ethical to report this confidence, until I found out the friend turned himself in and was held on bond.

I spoke to the former student today and asked, "So, did your friend turn himself in?"

"Naw, actually, it wasn't my friend they were looking for...the wanted guy had the same name as my friend, spelled differently."

So you mean I had an ethical crisis for NOTHING?

In retrospect, it makes sense, because when I read the article about the wanted man in the paper, my two thoughts were: "Hmm, he's aged REALLY bad in seven years," and "Wife? Pete's got a wife? I wonder what his girlfriend thinks about that." It didn't occur to me that it was a different guy than the one I had met at the student's graduation, because the name sounded the same.