I have a confession of sorts. A confession that’s slightly embarrassing, actually. It all started around three or four years ago when I got a Gmail account.

Keep in mind that this was back when you still had to get an invite from someone with an account already in order for you to get your own addy. So I was able to pick up a decent email address. No extraneous numbers or letters involved.

And I have never used it much. Because early on I noticed that I got a ton of spam. But it was weird spam. Like invites to poetry readings or holiday photos or just really weird spam. But I thought (and this is the embarrassing part) that this was a feature of Gmail. Like you’d get included in weird email lists that you didn’t sign up for but Gmail thought you’d be interested in.

Seriously. I thought that. For years.

It wasn’t until this week that I started going through all this random spam. Pages and pages of it. Only to realize that it’s all being sent to a woman with the name of Claire who lives in Vancouver. Like emails from her dad and shit.

Oops. Apparently not so much spam as actual emails delivered to the wrong Claire.

Now I don’t exactly feel bad. Either this Claire doesn’t know her own email address or she has friends, family and well-wishers incapable of writing down the correct one. And it could have been worse.

Case in point:

My mom told me a story today about a cousin of hers who, after ten years of having the same email address with Charter, suddenly stopped receiving emails. She contacted the company and learned that they had in fact given that email address just a month earlier to someone else.

Just like that. No explanation. No apology. No plans to change anything. Just gave it to someone else. And they are apparently unwilling to do anything about it.

They clearly don’t know my relative very well. But I’m guessing they soon will.