Who's this?

How can you really tell whom you're chatting with?

At the university, we used to group chat, one student would log with his ID, would meet people and we would either take turns at writing to her (yeah, mostly girls), or we would suggest to the typist what he should write. Therefore the girl was not talking to a single person but rather to a group of people without even knowing it.

I was talking to a young Indian man (26, Andhra Pradesh) whom I had met last year. The last time we chatted was in September 2004 -that's what my archive says-. I always thought of him as a nice guy, hard worker who takes time off work only when he's sick. I was quite surprised to see him online for two days in a row at this time instead of seeing him on sms like he used to be. I thought I said 'hi' to him.

We started talking and it was clear from his first few messages that there was something really different about him. I felt I was talking to a whole other person, then again how can I know for sure? I told him about it and he told me why he is different now, he was engaged, I thought, yes I can believe that, a girl can have that effect on a guy's life. But still, 'Sumit', just seemed to be someone I had never chatted with before, as much as I enjoyed talking to him last year I was not enjoying a bit of the conversation I was having with this guy.

He sounded like all those other strange people, asking me to always be his friend and all that kind of stuff, Sumit used to call me 'dude', he never talked to me that way. He sounded like he was hit on the head and became all jolly and started seeing life in pink. He had become so sensitive...
I told him my surprise and doubts. Then he told me he was in a life threatening accident and after escaping with minor bruises he decided to change his attitude towards life and towards people.
I kindda had a hard time swallowing that, since, he told me he was in his 'car' and was hit by a truck that made a U-turn in the middle of a street. He told me he lives in Delhi, as far as I can remember, I knew Sumit lived in Andhra Pradesh, though I am not 100% sure since it's been a long time since he had told me and of course I don't have the archive of our first conversation.

The first time we talked he was calling me 'dude' and now he is worried I would not want to be his 'friend' again because he was engaged, and that I would be jealous of his wife-to-be. That's odd, since last year he told me that his parents would start searching for a spouse for him during this year and at that time there were no worries about me being jealous. And again, I don't even remember him calling me 'friend' not even once and now there is this sudden attachment to me!

No, I'm sorry but I can't believe it. Still, he did tell me a few details that seemed to indicate that he is the same young man I chatted with last year, like the fact that we usually start talking a little while before my lunch time, that I was not wearing my hair down in the picture of me that he had seen, that I live in Haiti and that there was a natural disaster in my country last year and we talked about it.

I don't know if there is anything he can do to prove to me that he is the one he claims to be but I still am reluctant to believe him. One thing is for sure; I was not talking to the Sumit I once knew.