Jesse is not all that common a name, and so unlike the Toms, Davids, and Bobs of the world I don't run into much name confusion. So it was weird when recently I had a spate of Jesse confusions.
Incident 1
I once played in a band with a guitarist named Rob, who also has his own separate long-running group. I haven't talked to Rob in about five years, so I was surprised when I got a message from him saying "Are you available for a gig on any of these dates ...". Since the message didn't start with any sort of, "Hey, it's been a long time!" sort of introduction, I immediately suspected he might have texted the wrong person, and so I answered him with "Rob? Good to hear from you - it's been a while: just making sure you're messaging the right person". Rob's day job is teaching middle school, and he was trying to arrange this gig during quick breaks in his hectic day, so he somehow missed my initial response and we went back and forth a couple of times on which dates would work best. Finally, he mentioned that he had to coordinate with the rest of the band, and that the only one he'd spoken to so far was Mike. Which was weird, since I know that Mike is his keyboard player and so he didn't need a keyboard player for the gig. "Mike, your keyboard player?", I answered. And that's when it finally hit him that he was texting the wrong person. It turns out the drummer of his band is named Jesse (Jesse drummer played in a band at one point as well - like this crazy Mardi Gras gig) and he had indeed been texting with the wrong Jesse. My phone rang immediately. Apologies and some laughter followed.
Incident 2
There's a fairly tight-knit local Deadhead community in the DC area. As you might expect, most of these people are Baby Boomers, but there is a contingent of next-generation Millennial Deadheads: young adults who either absorbed the Dead from their parents or maybe picked a love of the Dead up in college, or whatever. My friend Laura is a Boomer Deadhead. Her son Jesse is a Millennial Deadhead. One night I was standing by the bar at a local live music venue. All of sudden little Sara, one of the Millennials, comes up to me and says, "Have you seen Jesse's mom? I saw her here a minute ago." Now, the "Jesse's mom" I immediately thought of had passed away in 2009 and so spotting her in 2024 at a brewpub in Virginia would have been quite surprising. I was left kind of speechless. Why was the ghost of my mother appearing to little Sara? Finally it occurred to me that Sara was referring to young Deadhead Jesse's mom Laura and I pointed her in the direction that Laura had gone.
I still think it's funny that a thirty year-old woman would refer to someone as "Jesse's mom", as if she was a little kid.
Incident 3
My Grateful Dead band recently played a gig with a guest singer named Jess. Jess is a talented singer who also plays piano. At one point in the run-up to the gig someone in the band texted, "I need to check with Jess about keys." I should mention here that musicians often refer to the keyboard instrument as "keys". I misinterpreted that text as saying that they wanted Jess to play keys at the gig - and so what was I, chopped liver? It turns out they just needed to ask her what keys she wanted to sing certain songs in, and had nothing to do with the "keys" instrument. Fortunately I hadn't sent the flaming text response which had immediately popped into my mind when I read the original message 😳.
OK, this last one isn't technically a Jesse mix-up - just a mix-up involving someone named Jess.
You might ask why I've never been known as "Jess". I'm not sure. In my life, only two people have consistently called me Jess: my aunt Marsha, and a guy I worked for for many years. I'm not averse to it (unlike Valerie and "Val"); it's just never been me.
