When I tell people I'm from Vegas (even though I've only been here the last 15 months), people will ask me, "Do you know Richard Smith?" as if there's only one Richard Smith in a town of 1.5 million people and that of course he meets and introduces himself to everyone he encounters. Ironically, I have lived here before, but it was a much different place 12 years ago.
Even then, there was another problem of identity. While being trained to be a missionary, I was introduced to another missionary from Las Vegas. When I asked him questions to determine if we might have had some confluence of interaction, he timidly admitted that he was from Las Vegas, NM, a quite different place.
The tables turned for me for the first time about two years later. While buying tickets for transport to the top of a mountain near Innsbruck, the salesman in the booth suddenly turned to me and asked me if I was a local. Keep in mind I spoke very good German, but the Swiss man next to me laughed his head off. Since I was a resident of Innsbruck and could prove my address, I obtained the local's discount (50% off) on the tickets, but I'm hardly FROM Innsbruck, no matter how much I love Tirol.
I was listening to the radio Monday and the host took a caller from Akron, presumably in OH, and launched into a diatribe about how vital this caller would be to the election. Come to find out, the caller was from Akron in a far distant part of the country. I think a lot of people do this to seem more important than they really are. I could say I've been to Moscow and Paris, but not to the ones you think of, I meaning the ones in Idaho. What do I have to gain from that? Nothing I want.
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