This is the one where God gave me a reason.

You can read about all the emails I get intended for other Mike Lawsons here.  The quick background is this: My email address is MikeLawson@gmail.com and I snagged that really early on.  Subsequent Mike Lawsons have signed up for variations of the address (such as MikeLawson77@gmail.com or MikeJLawson@gmail.com) but friends/family and other contacts have stupidly left off the letters and numbers that make their Mike Lawson’s email address unique.

So I get a bunch of strange email from people trying to get messages to their Mike Lawson.

In the past few days I’ve received a few funny ones.  I got this one Friday:

Wish I could…but I’m not the right Mike Lawson.

Then I got six pictures of this creepy white cat with blue eyes.  They were emailed by some girl named Maxine and she said, “Pictures as promised, sorry it took so long, but been without a computer.”

Creepy.  I think I’d rather go karaoking in San Fran than hang out with the cat.  The Mike Lawson from Houston has it better off.

This is the one written to someone else.

You can read about all the emails I get intended for other Mike Lawsons here.  The quick background is this: My email address is MikeLawson@gmail.com and I snagged that really early on.  Subsequent Mike Lawsons have signed up for variations of the address (such as MikeLawson77@gmail.com or MikeJLawson@gmail.com) but friends/family and other contacts have stupidly left off the letters and numbers that make their Mike Lawson’s email address unique.

So I get a bunch of strange email from people trying to get messages to their Mike Lawson.

A couple of weeks ago I got this tire quote:

Then I got this very serious email about dance recital fees:

And then I keep getting invited to view the online gallery of wedding photos from two people named Lyndsey &  (what kind of name is Malachi?!?).

I’ve viewed the wedding pictures just out of curiosity, and they are a really nice looking couple and I do wish them all the luck in the world.  I just don’t need to buy any of the photos from their freaking wedding.

They are pretty people, right?  I’ve kind of started to make up a story about them.  Maybe they’ll show up in one of my short stories or novels some day.

This is the one where she has a sense of humor.

I got an email last week from a woman named Rebekah Roberts [read it here] that was intended for some other Mike Lawson somewhere and it even had  a photograph of the Mike Lawson she was trying to contact.

I posted it, of course, and asked people how I should respond.  Derek had a good suggestion and said that I should ask if she was from the future and she accidentally emailed Mike Lawson of the past.  So here is how I responded:

Oh my god, Rebekah…are you from the future?  Is that what I’m going to look like?  What year are you writing me from?  Was it a good choice to skip the 401(k) and put all my money in a shoe box behind the stove?

Sincerely,

Mike Lawson (The 2010 Version)

I also, for kicks, included a link to my blog so she might click-through to see that I get a bit of mail for other Mike Lawsons. [Here is the archive of all the posts I've written on emails intended for other Mike Lawsons]  And guess what?  She wrote back!

Ah, Mike, so you got a glimpse of the future that awaits you due to an email misdirection … Yes, who knew that you’d be living in England and tapping on people for a living??  The future’s bright for you and you’ve got many happy years ahead of you.  Live in the moment and remember to spend that lottery win wisely when it arrives!

I’m glad that she has a sense of humor.

This is the one from Rebekah Roberts.

I got an email today that says “Hi Mike, Here’s the pictures of you and Karl that you wanted.  We’re on holiday this week so apologies for not getting them to you sooner.”

And then this picture is attached:

I have no idea who either of these people are.  And I do know that one of them is a Mike Lawson (I’m hoping it’s the more handsome gentleman on the left).

As you may remember, I often get emails intended for someone else.  Any suggestions on how to respond to this one?

This is another one not inteded for me.

As you may know, I get emails all the time that are intended for a different Mike Lawson.  My email address is simply MikeLawson at gmail…so I sometimes get emails intended for Mike Lawsons that have more complicated email addresses (MikeLawson7@gmail.com for example) and the sender has just left off the extras.

This week I got two emails that weren’t supposed to be sent to me.  The first was from The Home Improver Club.  According to the email I signed up for some club through Home Depot, and I’ll now receive “Home Improver Club communications” (spam) at this address.  Wonderful.

The second email was much funnier.  And I swear to god I’m not making this up…so I’m going to show you the screen captures to prove it.

My response:

Do you think this Sherri woman had some meaningless hookup and was trying to define a hookup for some playa named Mike Lawson?  What was the purpose of the original email?!

This is the one with a photo of a fifth grader.

I’ve blogged before about how I get random emails from people because my email address is just my name at gmail.com.

I got this strange urinal sign emailed to me.  And I blogged about the time that I replied to a mis-sent email about a fishing trip here.

Since then I’ve also been included in a bizarre email thread about posting bail for someone in South Dakota.

And the latest is an email that said, “Here are two picture of one of my 5th grade students.”  And attached were two pictures (including the one inserted into this post).

I replied to the woman and said “Umm…cool.  But who are you?  And why are you sending me pictures of children.”

The teacher replied and told me that “I’m a resource children at Arcola.  We were told to send pictures to you for the 5th grade slide show.”

I was half-tempted to take the two photos she sent me and put them into a Power Point, and email it back.  But I’ve been too busy for practical jokes.

This is the one that was not intended for me.

In February I wrote about a string of emails that were sent to my email address about a fishing trip that a different Mike Lawson was supposed to attend (read the post here).

My name isn’t that uncommon, and I was lucky enough to snag MikeLawson@gmail.com.  I’m sure that someone out there has MichaelLawson@gmail.com or MikeLawson1977@gmail.com or MikeRLawson@gmail.com.  But I’m just plain old Mike Lawson.  As I talked about with that fishing trip email that I linked to, I receive emails almost once a month for Mike Lawsons that have either improperly shared their email addresses or for people trying to reach a Mike Lawson but have left off the numbers or initials.

On Friday I received an email from a man named Trent and there was no subject, and there was absolutely no text in the email either.  The only thing I got was the following photo attachment:

And how do you get that in your inbox from some unknown person and not hit reply?  So I wrote Trent an email that asked him who he was and for an explanation of the photo.

Trent wrote back and said that he accidentally left the “4″ off of the email address.  And told me to enjoy the free photo.  But no explanation.