I notice her gaze out of the corner of my eye. She’s hovering above me, as I sit at a table in Darnall, where I’m enjoying a meal with a friend. I make eye contact, and she flashes me a coy smile. Shooting a quick glance behind her shoulder, she receives a wave from her friend, indicating that she should go through with it. One more deep breath and she’s finally ready to talk to me.
Most guys live for situations like this. Not me. My friend who’s sitting with me probably thinks I’m about to be asked on a date or told that I have the most gorgeous eyes in the world. No, I know what’s coming next. The seven dreaded words that have followed me for the past eight years: “Are you the kid from ‘The Nanny’?”
Apparently, the resemblance between Benjamin Salisbury (“Brighton Sheffield” on the show) and me is striking. It was a lot worse when the hit CBS comedy was still in syndication, and the low point was probably when my grandmother told me that I looked exactly like him. But even now, encounters like the one that happened in Darnall still occur from time to time. My predicament is a source of great joy for my friends, who love nothing more than to mock others for their misfortune. One of my friends made the following obnoxious, yet admittedly astute observation on the matter: “Some guys are lucky-they look like Brad Pitt. Other guys aren’t so lucky-they look like Stalin. You’re neither lucky nor unlucky-you look like Benjamin Salisbury.”
The Darnall episode, incidentally, was the first time that I’d answered the question in the affirmative. I was bored, and so I lied. I told the inquiring girl that I was in fact the kid from “The Nanny,” but that I didn’t really like to talk about it. She replied that she liked the show, and then left me alone, thinking that I didn’t want to be bothered by yet another die-hard Brighton Sheffield fanatic. I take pride in knowing that if the mystery girl is reading this article right now, she is likely feeling both disappointed and bamboozled. (That was the first time I’ve ever used the word “bamboozled” in either print or speech, but I think it’s the only appropriate word in this case.) My lie had worked. She thought she had met the kid from “The Nanny,” but instead she met me. I won.
Lying about being Benjamin Salisbury went so well that I began to realize that I might have spent the past seven years of my life missing out on a wonderful opportunity to exploit the fact that I resemble someone who was kind of famous a few years ago. With the help of God’s gift to frivolous researchers, Google, I came across literally dozens of Benjamin Salisbury fan pages and information sources. I began to memorize his vital information: born in Minneapolis on Oct. 19, 1980; appeared in The Mighty Ducks 3 and Iron Will; favorite school subject is social studies, etc. The next time someone asked me, I was going to be prepared.
That’s when things took a turn for the worst. I found a Hollywood.com brief bio on Salisbury, which called him “cherubic-faced.” This description intrigued me, so I took the next logical step: I bought a dictionary and looked up the word “cherubic,” since apparently my vocabulary is so limited that I can’t understand a word used by Hollywood.com. Here’s what I found: “cherub-any of a kind of angel, often represented as a chubby, rosy-faced child with wings.” This would be great if I was a twelve-year-old girl, but as a twenty-year-old male, I was really hoping for something more along the lines of “incredibly handsome and/or sexy.” I was crushed and cried myself to sleep that night. The dictionary’s unflattering description of Benjamin Salisbury’s [my] face permanently discouraged me from pursuing my goal of exploiting my looks for personal gain. My chubby, rosy face furrowed into a deep frown.
Many of these web sites also contained pictures, and in a weak and desperate moment, I showed my roommate one of them, hoping he would discount the opinion of countless others. I couldn’t really look that much like him, could I? Unfortunately for me, my roommate was so astounded by what he saw, that he made the portrait of Benjamin Salisbury the background to his computer. It’s been there for the past three weeks. He still stares at it from time to time, laughing maniacally and beaming. “It’s uncanny” he shouts, “the resemblance is uncanny!”
I take a small amount of comfort in telling myself that at some point in his life, there’s a chance that Salisbury has had the question posed to him, “are you Scott Conroy?” But I fear that he has not. All that I ask for is some respect, and maybe even a little sympathy. Put yourself in my shoes. At different times in my life, various people have referred to me as “Nanny Boy,” and I even had an ex-girlfriend exclusively call me “Brighton” for a week. This kind of name-calling does nothing to boost my ego or even put a smile on my cherubic face. Please, stop bothering me, and go pester that dude who looks exactly like Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Scott Conroy is a junior in the College. Those who know him will be shocked to learn that he is not pictured here.
