My Biggest Email Fail. Ever.

It's so hard to imagine life now without email. Yet, prior to email, it was much more difficult to humiliate yourself in any big way through correspondence alone.

My husband works in management for an NPR affiliate station and, every year, attends a public radio conference. Because of the flexibility of homeschooling, our son and I usually travel with him and take in the historic and cultural attractions of the host city while my husband attends his conference. One morning, during the planning stages, my husband forwarded an email from the national coordinator of the conference, outlining the conference agenda, hotel information, etc. Since I'm irrationally discerning about hotels, he wanted my opinion.

I was tired when I read his email. Our family dog, who had a multitude of health problems, had been up all night. The dog was very pampered and all 105 lbs. of him slept on our bed each evening. But, the previous night, he'd been restless, feverish, and acting oddly. At one point, my husband actually got up and slept on the couch so he could get some rest. He'd made a wise choice. I sleepily replied to his email, detailing how the rest of the night had gone. What I hadn't realized was that I'd clicked "Reply All", so the public radio conference coordinator---who had no idea we had a dog with a man's name--received this email, addressed to my husband

"It was a good thing you slept on the sofa last night. Wallace was really hot all night. I couldn't believe how hot he was. He just wouldn't calm down. I even asked him if he had to use the bathroom, but he didn't seem to want to. He finally got out of bed and I didn't know where he went. I looked down the hallway to see him pulling himself along the carpet by his elbows, dragging his legs behind him. He was acting so weird! He finally got back in bed with me, but neither of us got any sleep."

Oh, and I also criticized the hotel choice.

Neither my husband nor I realized the coordinator had received the email until my husband saw the email return to him from her with this comment: "I don't believe I was the intended recipient of this email." For obvious reasons, she did not want further details of our apparently strange and sordid lifestyle.

I'm still tempted to send her a belated email of just five words: "Wallace was a dog. Honest."