I attend parties in Dubai. I pick up after weddings, especially weddings where the bride and groom have trouble lighting the unity candle. I fly from London to Salt Lake City. I take Musical Theater and\/or Dance Fusion. I’ve rented cars in Dallas. I’ve put down deposits on apartments. I receive recipes, offensive e-mail forwards, and pictures of total strangers’ kids.<\/p>\n
Why? Because my name is common. And while I myself am not doing any of that stuff, somewhere in this world is another<\/em> Jenny Brown doing that stuff. Or, rather, many Jenny Browns doing that stuff. Because my gmail account—which I’ve had to more or less abandon—is full of e-mail that was sent to me by mistake. I thought I was so clever getting to gmail fast enough to get jennybrown at gmail.com. Little did I know it was one of the dumbest things I’ve done on the Internet.<\/p>\n I keep the account because I use it as a way to back up my writing. I have a program that syncs up my computer every now and then with some offline computer (I picture something very 1960s, a room full of computers spewing out punch cards), but I find it helpful to e-mail myself my work in progress as a safety measure. Also, because I can access gmail from any computer, I can get to my work in progress from anywhere.<\/p>\n About once a month or so I go in there to clean out my account, to see what the other Jenny Browns of this world are up to. A lot of them shop, because I’m forever getting store notices for places they registered at. And apparently a significant number of Jenny Browns are British, because I keep getting things that are priced in pounds. I’ve gotten receipts. I’ve gotten notifications of plane tickets. What would happen if I showed up and took one of those flights? My name would match that on the ticket, after all.<\/p>\n When an e-mail comes from a person, I try to do the right thing and let them know that they have the wrong e-mail address. Sometimes that bites me in the butt.<\/p>\n This is an honest to goodness exchange I’ve had on my gmail account:<\/p>\n Someone replied to this e-mail, which was sent from a Jenny Brown who has an initial in her e-mail address.<\/p>\n Hello Troop Leaders,<\/p>\n We will have a meeting on [date] in [place]. This will be in preparation for our first troop meeting o. I will be leading this meeting since it will be L’s first day in her new position as TA!! Congratulations L.<\/p>\n Best, Someone wanted to reply. But instead of hitting “reply,” the responder typed in the e-mail address, leaving out the “D” so it came to me:<\/p>\n Hi Jenny<\/p>\n I;m really sorry but I am working please can you arrange future meetings on Thursdays as I don’t work them.<\/p>\n I hope it goes well<\/p>\n Martine<\/em><\/p>\n Feeling kind, I responded: You have the wrong email address. Looks like you forgot the d.<\/em><\/p>\n She replied: Thanks. What does D stand for?<\/em><\/p>\n Me: I don’t know as I’m not her.<\/em><\/p>\n E-mailer: Now you’ve got me completely confused!<\/em><\/p>\n I spelled it out for the poor woman: I got your original email by mistake. You sent an email to [address] instead of [address], which is where the original email came from. I don’t know Jenny D. Brown and I don’t know you. Hope that clears it up.<\/p>\n I prefer it when they get belligerent, like this one from today:<\/p>\n e-mailer: The only flight that will get you […long explanation of flights]<\/em> I don’t even know what that means! And that would have been the end of it, except that last night, there was another e-mail. After getting it, I had to ask Adam, “Is he for real or is he putting me on?” I honestly don’t know at this point:<\/p>\n Hi. my love<\/p>\n I know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s you Jenny and why are you doing this. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what I did to make you do this and I am not going to assume to why ether. You know I will not give up on you and if you really want to end are relationship. Just say so. Your price for life Paul<\/em><\/p>\n My favorite, though, is the guy I e-mailed that he had the wrong address and he responded: Of course. If you do want to reach me, the best way is that e-mail address on the side of the blog. Otherwise, you might be waiting a long time for a response. And it might come from another Jenny Brown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I attend parties in Dubai. I pick up after weddings, especially weddings where the bride and groom have trouble lighting the unity candle. I fly from London to Salt Lake City. I take Musical Theater and\/or Dance Fusion. I’ve rented cars in Dallas. I’ve put down deposits on apartments. I receive recipes, offensive e-mail forwards, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,99],"class_list":["post-1785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-me","tag-the-other-jenny-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAgenda to follow~<\/p>\n
\nJenny Brown<\/em><\/p>\n
\nme: You have the wrong email address.<\/em>
\ne-mailer: What is this Jenny? I have been using this email address for some time. I started with grandmann and swathed pjsieger once you knew my name.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYou know I love you and I will always be here for you JennyThere is no other woman that I want but you.<\/p>\n
\nNo, I don’t. You told me not to e-mail you at your work e-mail.<\/em><\/p>\n