I Just Did Something Really Stupid

9:30 p.m. My cell phone rings - it's my mother-in-law.

I've just done something really stupid, she says.

Flash back to 1999

The boy and I had just gotten married. I was ready to convert my life from Alloway to Hayley - driver's license, social security card and HR forms, all changed with relatively little hassle.

Then I tried to change my email address. I had a particular email convention as a single woman that I wanted to parallel, with a slight adjustment to the last name (of course), as a married woman. This was easier thought than done.

My m-i-l had recently signed up for her first email account and apparently had difficulty getting the provider to cooperate. In frustration, she signed up for her second, third and fourth email accounts.

She finally got the fourth one to work properly and let the others lay dormant. No big deal, right?

Wrong. My m-i-l and I are alike in many ways. We enjoy the same type of hobbies, like the same stores and love the same Boy. We also have the same initials, once I was married.

Every possible combination of email addresses that I tried to set up were already claimed - and abandoned - by her.

I finally pirated an account away from her by guessing her password (I told you we're quite alike: it wasn't hard for me to guess in three tries or less) and claiming the email account as her own.

Flash forward to the present

I've just done something really stupid, she says.

What's that? I ask.

Well, I really love crosswords. So I ordered a crossword program for the computer. And I don't know why I did it, but I used your email address for the order instead of mine.

I know why that happened, I said, before telling her about my pirating of her, forgotten-until-now, email account in 1999.

We laugh. She's not angry. Instead, she asks me, Can you forward me the email verification? Without it, I don't have the code to authorize the game.

Sure! So I open my email. There in my inbox is an email with the subject line:

Crosswords for Dummies Order Verification

Here it is! I said. Ummm...crosswords for dummies?

I was hoping you wouldn't notice that! she said. Please don't blog about this.

You don't know me at all.