My cybermom sometimes relies too much on e-mail. Well, actually, it is not that she relies on it too much. It is that she trusts it. At least, she used to trust it. I think she has learned not to trust it anymore. Her trust was definitely broken in Moldova.
There she was teaching a seminar and keeping in touch with people back home, as usual, via e-mail. One day she had several letters to answer, and she did that very quickly, too quickly for the slow Internet in Chisinau to handle. Addresses got reshuffled and attached to the wrong notes, as Mommy splashed mail fast and furious into the Internet. As a result, the mail went to all the wrong people. Mommy found this out when people sent her very puzzled responses; they did not know that the mail had gone to the wrong addresses because Mommy does not often use names in salutations. Here are some examples:
She sent a note to my sister, Lizzie, who was moving to Illinois to go to school and needed some financial help. Mommy wrote a very simple, quick answer, with no name, saying "I will give you $1000 to move to Illinois." The note went instead to a friend of Mommy's. The friend said that she would be willing to take the money, but she wanted to know why Mommy wanted her to move to Illinois.
Mommy sent a note to my other sister, Noelle, who was living with Lizzie and not behaving very well. Mommy was very succinct, again with no name at the top of the note: "Either get your act together or move in with me!" That note, by accident, went to a colleague Mommy had just met at the State Department. That colleague was quite surprised by it and wondered what she had done wrong and why on earth Mommy would ever want her to come live with her!
Daddy got a note that was supposed to go to a college professor. He was very confused. He did not understand what it was that Mommy wanted him to do. (Daddy is a photographer, forester, and computer graphist, not a professor.)
Mommy sent a lovey-dovey note to Daddy, whose name is Donnie. She did use the salutation then, calling Daddy "My dearest and darlingest Donnie." Oh, oh! The note went to a US Air Force general with whom Mommy was supposed to meet when she got back to the United States, and the general's first name is Donald!
Oh, oh, oh, oh! Poor Mommy! She had a lot of messes to clean up that were left behind by her cyber mailman! (Better watch out for him; he is a haphazard mail carrier!)
____________________
A post over at Judith Mercado's blog (Pilgrim Soul) in which she thanks readers for being willing to accept mail from her cyber postal carrier prompted me to post this excerpt from Doah's book (copyright 2003).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
About Me
- Elizabeth Mahlou
- I am the mother of 4 birth children (plus 3 others who lived with us) and grandmother of 2, all of them exceptional children. Married for 42 years, I grew up in Maine, live in California, and work in many places in education, linguistics, and program management. In my spare time, I rescue and tame feral cats and have the scars to prove it. A long-time ignorantly blissful atheist converted by a theophanic experience to Catholicism, I am now a joyful catechist. Oh, I also authored a dozen books, two under my pen name of Mahlou (Blest Atheist and A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God).
Recommended Reading List
Because I am blog inept, I don't quite know how to get a reading list to stay at the end of the page and not disappear from sight. Therefore, I entered it as my first post. I suppose that is not all that bad because readers started commenting about the books, even suggesting additional readings. So, you can participate with others in my reading list by clicking here.I do post additional books as I read them and find them to be meaningful to me, and therefore, hopefully, meaningful to you. One advantage of all the plane traveling I do is that I acquire reading time that I might not otherwise take.
Amusing tale, but with a lot of truth in it. In this technological era, correspondence can and does go to the wrong recipient quite often with unexpected results.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.
Your son's words made me laugh. What a wonderful way to start my day!
ReplyDeleteJust what I needed to brighten my day. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteBlessings, hugs, and prayers, andrea
That's happened to me just ONCE - and once is enough to die of embarrassment!
ReplyDeleteHah! That's hilarious! Heck, I would move for that much money, lol...
ReplyDeleteElizabeth:
ReplyDeleteThis mess sounds like something that could happen to me. So funny, only in retrospect.
Its quite interesting to read these incidents from daily life that can happen to anyone!
ReplyDeleteJoy always,
Susan
This is hilarious! A well-written story and a wonderful read for my morning. (I came here from Judith, via Cuban)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Deborah, and welcome. I am glad you enjoyed the story. It was, however, quite embarrassing at the time.
ReplyDelete