I have a pretty straightforward email address, and I’m happy to say that I’ve had that address for nearly 8 years.  No spamming.  No lock-outs.  No need to change.

I guess you could say that I’m about as happy with it as one could possibly be with a free email account.

The only thing that irks me is that, every now and then, I get an email for the person who (whom?) I refer to as my “email doppelganger”.

She lives in Australia.  I know this because I get all sorts of updates for her.  Stuff for her dental appointments.  Updates about her kid’s swimming activities and school events.  RSVPs to parties that she’s planning and invitations to parties that her friends are planning but which she probably won’t attend, because she never got the email.

I’ve emailed people back, telling them that they’ve done the equivalent of dialing the wrong number.  Some of them I delete or mark as spam, such as the automated ones from her dentist.

I thought about emailing her but didn’t know her address.  Maybe she had an underscore between the first and last name that kept getting left out.  Perhaps her name was spelled slightly differently.  I decided to stick with the fairly basic variation of a “.” inserted.  Except when I did that, the email came directly to me.  Apparently, my email server has that linked to my email address, too.

A few months back, I got an email for her.  It was a party invitation.  I told the sender that they’d gotten the wrong address, and she apologized, telling me that my doppelganger’s email was actually ________@______.com.  I finally had it!  I’d been getting emails for this woman for 6 years and at last, I knew what her email address was.

It’s very, very similar (of course) but not in the way that I expected, and I can see why people would make such mistakes.

I didn’t email her, but I was tempted.  I still am, actually.  Except she might be mad at me for not telling her about her dentist appointments and for having people unexpectedly show up who had RSVP’ed to me and not to her.  And there’s also the issue of that one time that I sent a “reply all” to her ocean swim club that basically said “Stop sending me emails.  Remove me from this list!”  That swim club apparently had little better to do but to send emails and then “reply all” multiple times.  I would get 20 emails a day just from that swim club.  Needless to say, I was a bit annoyed at still being on the list despite many polite “do not send” requests, and that may have come across in my final “reply all” email.  I’m guessing that some of her swim club members thought that it was Australian Jenny, not me, and for all I know they booted her out of the club!

Whatever – they got the picture, but perhaps I’ll leave off on emailing her for now.  And as it would seem, she’s not my only email doppelganger.  Unless she’s moved to New York.

That’s right: I’m now getting the occasional odd, random email for some Jenny from the block that lives in NYC.  I’ve done the usual quick reply of “wrong email address” and gotten embarrassed responses of, “Oops – so sorry!”.

I’m hoping that NY Jenny changes her email.  One doppelganger is enough.

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Anyone else out there have an email doppelganger?  Did you find out their real address and email them?  Are you best friends now?!