The One Where I Met Myself
While getting on with my work this morning – yes, it happens sometimes – I noticed a raft of emails arriving in Google Mail, and curiosity got the better of me. This is why I rarely get anything done if there is any chance of procrastination available to me.
That’s odd, I thought. These emails are from some kind of online marketplace website, asking me to confirm my email address – and look at that – I’ve bought something too?
A little voice in my head started shouting “YOUR BANK ACCOUNT IS BEING EMPTIED RIGHT NOW!” through a pretty impressive megaphone, causing me to swing into immediate action (read: hunch closer to the screen with a furrowed brow). After checking that the website really existed, and that the from address of the email was correct, and the links in the email were not from spurious domain names, I decided to be clever.
I confirmed my email address, reset the password on the account, and logged in. Apparently the “other me” had bought a number of pink Casio mathematics calculators. They were pretty good value too. I looked for some way of remedying the situation, and emailed the owners of the auction website – telling them what had happened. Then I noticed the guy’s phone number in his account details.
One google search later, and I discovered there is another person with the same name as me, living about 200 miles away, working as a math tutor in a school. I sent him a text message. Ten minutes later my phone made a cheerful sound (I rarely receive text messages, so it was a bit of a surprise), and I changed the email address on the account. He also volunteered that he was the cause of a strange email I received about six months ago too.
Of course now I’m wondering what would happen if we were to cross paths in real life – would we somehow morph together into one bigger person? I’m also wondering about the pink calculators. Are pink calculators cheaper than other colours? Was this the result of a ridiculous female targetted marketing disaster? Or was the teacher using them to shame anxiety ridden teen boys that have forgetten their calculators for lessons ? I’ll never know.