Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Never scare a writer...

So yesterday, my editor at the newspaper I freelance for, sent me a new assignment via email. I was visiting friends last night, so once I got home and got Little Miss to bed, I opened my laptop, pulled up the emails from my editor, and hit reply to write back and ask a few questions.

When I hit send and the email processed, I realized that the "sent" notification yahoo shows after sending an email had a completely different subject title than the one I had just sent. Instead of the boring, article-related subject title that had been there when I wrote my email, my sent mail showed this one instead...

Who drank my crystal Pepsi?

I'm not kidding.

My jaw dropped.

I had just emailed my editor a note at 10:00 at night asking her who drank my Pepsi.

That part alone was bad enough. I quickly emailed her an explanation and apology, and then I started getting nervous. Was my email being hacked into? Was someone spying on my computer? Then I thought of horror movies and how maybe my laptop had a ghost wondering where her drink was and she was trying to convey a late night message to me about her death...

Yeah. Never scare a writer.

My skin was craaaawling!! I don't believe in ghosts, of course - but at nighttime, alone in the dark living room, wondering what the heck was going on with my laptop, well. It was food for my very vivid imagination.

I called my parents to see if my dad might have an idea, being a computer tech, but he was unavailable and my mom had no clue and was as curious/creeped out as I was. So, keeping her on the phone, I bravely went back to my haunted laptop and googled the phrase in quotes "Who drank my crystal Pepsi?"

The hit returned several blog links. I opened one, quite nervous...and thank the Lord, some random person in the blog-o-sphere explained the phenomenon. Apparently, yahoo mail has a feature (and a completely unnecessary one at that!) where if you click the subject button beside the subject line, it provides you with a random, witty subject title all by itself. I somehow clicked that button when typing my email, and there you have it. Thank you, random blogger.

No ghosts. No need for a priest, or a new laptop.

I emailed my poor editor to explain. She laughed and said she thought I was just trying to be funny!

Yes. Hilarious.

Thanks yahoo.

6 comments:

Melissa said...

This is too funny, Betsy! Thanks for the laugh. I needed it today!! :) I'm off to see what title it will come up with for me. LOL

Unknown said...

Ha! What did we do before Google?

Georgiana Daniels said...

HAHAHA!!! That is hysterical! Thanks for sharing the much needed pick me up today :D

Jennye M said...

I flipped thru some of these on my Yahoo tonight... I'm just glad that was the worst one you sent. There are others that could have been MUCH harder to explain! haha

Warren Baldwin said...

Hilarious! Though I understand why you didn't think so at the time. Can't understand why Yahoo would have that feature.

Linked here from FB. wb

jenness said...

I'll have to try that. :-) Who knew?