Taylor Swift Impersonator at Rye Free Reading Room: Why Everyone Pretended She Was Real

Last weekend in Westchester, Taylor Swift was at the Rye Free Reading Room on Sunday. That's not exactly true.  If you squinted hard enough, you could certainly see a person who might have kind of sort of looked like Taylor Swift moving in the syncopated rhythm that one sees when you watch her Eras Tour on Disney Plus. Yet, even through the endless avalanche of soap bubbles spitting out into air like exhaust from a used car in the winter, we knew it wasn't her. We being the seemingly hundreds of parents who had given up their Sunday to look for parking for a full hour so that the family could stand on a singular plot of land as face painted kids screamed around them. Despite the blaring music that knocked a migraine into the entirety of my body, I knew the person being called Taylor Swift wasn't the same person who once wrote an entire song about John Mayer, or maybe didn't, but certainly wrote one about Harry Styles. I knew she wasn't the person my oldest had posters of next to Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter.  Through toddler meltdown after meltdown, through the announcements of missing children who were just playing in bouncy castles, despite what the man manning the bubbles machine said over the loudspeaker,  I was never fooled. And yet, the children of kids dressed up for the procession of that afternoon in Vineyard Vines, Exeter sweatshirts, and MIT hats, they all went to take a picture of this impersonator. They all played along with the lie. 

Why? 

Truth be told, I don't know exactly what this event was for. I could look it up, but that would require a certain amount of energy that I haven't had since my first child was born. This blog is not about research. I think it was to raise money for the Rye Library, though I don't know why any established institution in Rye, New York is in need of money. Nevertheless, my wife dragged me to this hellscape (a place only matched in evil by bars like Joshua Tree and Tonic East and Turtle Bay that existed when I lived in the city), with all three of our kids because the middle child's friend's mother, who she doesn't even really know, said she was going. That's all it takes for a suburban family to get out of the house on Sundays these days I guess. I blame it on the unreasonable amount of rain we've had this spring (though I appreciate it when the oldest has her soccer games cancelled because of the precipitation). 

Anyway, we're there, and there are some people I think I'm supposed to know because I've gone to birthdays, but don't really know because no one waves to me on walks or invites me into their bookclubs. One guy is wearing a visor like it's 2002, and he's a big Limp Bizkit fan, and he's talking about his Weber Grill that I need to get because if I don't have a Weber Grill what is even the point of having a house. 

 "Just get an apartment at that point," he says. "And if you're getting an apartment, why don't you just live in the city?" I don't have a rejoinder that is appropriate for our level of familiarity, so I just swallow my words and wish that I was sitting alone at Longford's Ice Cream instead of talking to this person who loves talking about golf and his handicap in golf and how he once played golf in college in a school just outside of Boston. Babson? I think without saying anything again. 

My middle child has abandoned me to go into a bouncy castle that looks like a fire engine, which if you ask me sort of undercuts what the point of a fire engine is. What are we teaching our children about fire safety, if they're allowed to run wild and dislocate their shoulders in a replica of a fire truck? The oldest has seen one of her friends from a travel soccer team, and they're discussing the food trucks, including one for Walter's Hot Dogs, which I have a fondness for because decades ago, a senior acquaintance of mine in high school once took me there during lunch because "she was tired of seeing me at the same table every day, and I needed to not eat in the cafeteria for once in my life." The line is too long though. 

My wife is talking about another one of the moms on our street. Another person who doesn't wave to me when I go on my once a month jogs. Another person who doesn't invite me to her book club. At least my wife and the person she is talking to are talking about her in a negative manner. I appreciate that. I imagine the tone of their conversation has everything to do with the fact that they are offended on my behalf and not because they saw her sipping white wine alone in the backyard in the midst of a snow storm. 

"Get your picture taken with Taylor Swift," the man on the microphone says again. 

I'm holding the baby. She is not wild about the bubbles, or the smoke, or any of the people talking about golf or  real estate or tennis or the renovations to the bathrooms that need to be made inside the houses of these people who just like to hear themselves talk. 

"What's your handicap?" the man with the visor asks me. His name is something I should know. Gregg. Gary. Grant. Something with a G. 

"I don't play golf," I say. 

"Might as well live in the city," he says and some of the other guys laugh. I don't get it. All of them have golf handicaps. 

"We're going to go get a picture with Taylor Swift," I say to my wife and anyone who is listening. 

"You know she's a fake, right?" Gunther asks. 

I do, and I know all these people here are too. Myself included. So, I take the baby to get a picture with the Taylor Swift impersonator because I know deep in my soul we're all impersonating someone in the suburbs of Westchester. 

When we get there, there is no line. I see a young woman who doesn't really look like Taylor Swift at all. She's on her phone, chewing a piece of what might be nicotine gum, but probably isn't. 

"We're here for a picture," I say, and she hangs up the phone.  The woman stands up, her shoulders back, immediately pushed into the pose she thinks Taylor Swift would take if she was speaking to a baby who is wet from urine and a Dad who looks like he just stepped out of a health insurance commerical. We pose, and the picture comes out instantly. Kodak? Something else. I didn't know they still make those kinds of cameras. On closer examination of the picture, I look more like Taylor Swift than this young woman does. 

"Does she want my autograph?" Taylor asks looking at the baby who has just vomited milk onto her chin. I nod my head. Why not? If all these other people can pretend, why can't a Taylor Swift impersonator do the same?