One of two things is happening, and its been happening for years.
EITHER, every Sarah Franzen on earth is incapable of remembering her email address, OR this selfsame host of Sarahs is beset by friends, colleagues, and corporate entities who can’t get their address right.
I know this, because I get all their email.
It started maybe fifteen years ago with a Sarah Franzen in Georgia whose dad’s lawyer was dividing up the family McDonald’s stock. I followed this wealthy Peach State Sarah through her student teaching, graduation, and meteoric rise as a Fulton County Schools administrator. Each time lesson plans or legal documents or dire warnings about Teacher X’s performance wound up in my inbox, I sent the same reply:
“Hi! I don’t think I’m the Sarah you’re looking for. I actually live in Indiana…” but it never stopped.
As time passed, I collected additional Sarahs. There was the one in Sweden organizing her firstborn’s baptism with a local Lutheran pastor; the one whose German boyfriend was getting her plane tickets (“Hi! I don’t speak German, so I hope you can read this, but I am actually not…”); the Sarah Franzen who orders makeup on a near weekly basis and has all the confirmations sent to me. The list goes on.
Occasionally I get rapid-fire bursts of two-factor authentication requests in Scandinavian languages, and I imagine a string of Sarah Franzens weeping on the edge of a fjord somewhere, mourning their forever-lost account access.
One time, a daycare let me know that my son’s evaluation had gone well, and that he was making great progress. I didn’t open the PDF, but I did send an email: “Hi there!…” The near-instantaneous apology I got back was professional enough on the surface, but its subtext screamed, “Ohmygodohmygod! Don’t tell! Please don’t tell! We’re gonna get sued!” I thought about assuring them that it was not their fault, that most Sarah Franzens are barely-functioning idiots who can’t write an email address, but I thought it best to leave well enough alone.
My favorite of all time was probably my lengthy involvement with the Ohio Air National Guard. First, I was invited to Chief Master Sergeant Training School. I let the commanding officer know that I was not Chief Master To Be Sarah, and she replied cordially, adding, “Are *you* interested in the Air National Guard?”
I told her I was an English instructor in my late thirties in the wrong state.
She said, “You never know! Might be fun!”
Chief Master Sergeant in Training Sarah’s instructors sent me flight rosters and other official-looking military documents. I deleted them (“Hi!…”). Then there was a lull of several years, until 2021 or ‘22 when I was invited to speak at Colonel So-and-So’s retirement party. I let the organizers know that I was a middle-aged woman with no military experience whose Ph.D. was on the 19th century temperance movement. They let *me* know that Colonel So-and-So was quite the history buff, so if I really wanted to come, he might enjoy my speech.
All of this has left me less than sanguine about the quality of Ohio’s air defense systems. But on the bright side, if you want a second career in the military, are 73 years old, have a peg leg and one eye, the Ohio Air National Guard will probably take you.
As I write this, several emails are sitting in my inbox from something like the Sunnydale (Shadyvale? Gloomydowns?) HOA. An officious woman named Sheila is awaiting my vote on Bob’s tulip tree. I don’t know if Bob is planting the tree or cutting it down or using it as a catapult to send eggs into Sheila’s windows. But I do know that I can’t let this go much longer. I have to sign off here and go write an email. “Hi!…”
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