The Other Me

I have had a slightly confusing email exchange today on Gmail. For the purposes of this, we'll pretend that my real name is Lintford Christie, and hope that it doesn't get too complicated (though I think it may have done already...)

Even though my full name is Lintford, my email address is lint.christie@gmail.com. The email I received today was from lintford.christie@gmail.com. It said:

"Are you a real member?"

I replied with

"A real member of what?"

Which seemed a valid response to me, since I am a real member of many things, including, but not limited to, my bank, Blogger and the human race.

It later transpired that poor Lintford (the other one, not me) had just joined Gmail and was annoyed (in a friendly, non-aggresive way) that he had to have the lintford.christie address rather than the lint.christie one that I already have.

I can only wonder if his initial question implies that he thinks there are a lot of fake fictional people set up on the system, purely for the purposes of annoying people like him. I kind of wish I'd replied with "No, I am not real. I am a product of your own mind, and you have multiple personality disorder. Have a nice day!". But I didn't say that.

To add to the confusion, my actual name on the Gmail (rather than email address) is Lintford, and his is Lint. I don't think I'll extend my communications with him further, since I would start to worry that I had multiple personality disorder myself. In fact, maybe I have. Who is writing this anyway?