Real Virtual Friends

One way to find out who your real friends are is to have a computer problem and then see who sticks by you.

I’m working out of my home office today, using my laptop, because the desktop in my regular office is on the fritz. For whatever reason, it started sending out multiple copies of each email I sent. I had no idea it was happening until my email recipients started emailing me back.

“How strange,” Don emailed me. “Your message came to my Inbox 66 times!”

I’m “coming to your house to give you a noogie,” Sheila, one my editors, wrote back. “Got this four more times. It is, however, making me laugh!!”

I wanted to apologize but couldn’t, at least not by email from my desktop. It would only have generated more multiple copies. So that night at home, I emailed everyone I remembered having sent emails to, to say how sorry I was for having blitzed them with messages. I was all too familiar with what it felt like to be bombarded by email offering everything from replica watches to cheap meds.

My emailed friends, to my surprise, stuck by me, wrote back that they understood.

“Not a problem,” Don wrote. “I'm just glad it's your computer and not mine! God love technology.”

“No worries,” an editor replied. “Who knows, maybe you'll get a good essay out of it!”

“The Quill Pen!!” a fellow writer wrote back. “I say, the Quill Pen Age Shall Return!! The Spawn of Hal shall be overthrown! I don't know why any of these machines work the way they do, but I still have a Rolodex, just in case the electricity goes out but the phones still work. And I keep my quill pen and notepad nearby. Have a good weekend!”

Still, I felt horrible knowing that I’d showered everyone with multiple copies of messages they may not have wanted one copy of.

Since then, I’ve made an appointment to get my computer repaired. Until the problem is solved, I’ll continue to work out of my home office, where I gingerly send out emails and hope each recipient receives only one.