Yesterday, while discussing email addresses over coffee with a friend, I found myself reminiscing about my early days as an AOL subscriber. This was relatively early in the email game for most people outside of technical or academic settings. Back then, for most people, Spam was simply a pressed meat product produced by the Hormel Company and the subject of a rather bizarre Monty Python sketch.
I have a fairly common name which was adopted into a fairly common sounding email address, and as a result found myself the recipient of emails clearly intended for others. Most of them were routine, and I generally ignored them. A couple struck me as being important enough to notify the sender that their email had gone astray.
There was the very nice retired commercial pilot who was trying give advice to his hoping to be a commercial pilot son. I sent him a reply, wishing him and his son luck, and received a lovely answer.
But my all-time, very favorite mis-sent email ran something as follows:
Dear Pat:
It turns out that we can't be in Miami next month after all. Would you be interested in the Super Bowl tickets?
Eric
************
My reply:
Dear Eric:
I am not the Pat you're looking for. But I would be more than happy to take the Super Bowl tickets off of you.
Pat
***********
Eric wrote back thanking me for letting him know that his email had not reached its intended target, then said that he had already disposed of the tickets.
Rats. Just when I was thinking that something really cool might come from all this electronic communication.
I'm still surprised by the number of people who can't figure out their own email addresses; I've gotten proofs for someone's wedding invitations, online banking information, and the most recent example was somehow getting subscribed to a Texas-based Tea Party mailing list. All of these, so far as I can tell, were intended to go to [myfirstinitial][mylastname]@[some domain that isn't gmail].com.
ReplyDelete