When I first started blogging, I loved the anonymous nature of it, because I was a mean person and I looked forward to using my blog to say mean things about people anonymously.
But then it occurred to me that I might want some people to actually read my blog and if I was anonymous, my friends wouldn't know I was blogging. I had to make a choice; be a dick and blog in obscurity, or not be a dick and have readers.
I think I made the right choice, because I am a lot less mean now. I think about other peoples' feelings and shit. This has spread to my other social media as well, where I don't passive aggressively vague-book or sub-tweet the way that I'm SURE I would have if I hadn't started blogging non-anonymously first. Blogging helped me evolve into a more thoughtful and compassionate human being, is what I'm saying.
Anyway - all this talk of non-anonymity is just background for this post, which is about my real name: Rosemary Rowe.
Phew. Now you know.
I LOVE my name and think it was a bold choice on my parents' part to go with the alliteration. I also, for many years, thought it was unique. I'd certainly never met any other Rosemarys. And how many Rosemary Rowes could there BE in the world??
It turns out, there are A LOT. And for some reason, they don't know their own fucking gmail address. How do I know this? Because they keep using mine.
My gmail address is my full name [at] gmail.com. No one else has that email address. But the other Rosemarys keep either giving it out (and never getting the subsequent emails, because I get them), or their friends/colleagues/lawyers/family can't remember their actual email address.
I get Rosemary Rowe in Dublin's email the most: I've gotten her plane tickets, her son Philip's wedding invite list (full names and addresses), her son's wedding photos, her birthday party pictures (one of which is the picture at the top of the post), financial portfolio information from her stock brokers and a three day travel log from her Uncle Mike when he and the wife visited the Vatican. I actually have Dublin Rosemary's work email address now, so that I can forward her whatever weird shit I get that is clearly meant for her.
A Rosemary Rowe in Minnesota was invited to a Bible Study by her friend Susan, because the Lord had laid it on Susan's heart to help Rosemary avoid a divorce by becoming a more submissive wife. You can imagine how I was DYING to impersonate THAT Rosemary, but it seemed like Susan and Rosemary were co-workers, so I knew I couldn't get away with it, so I had to email Susan back. Then Susan sent me the Bible study homework, just in case. Thanks, Susan.
Rosemary Rowe in New South Wales had a few books out from the Sutherland Shire Library that were due soon (plus she had requested Gnomeo and Juliet, which was in!). I didn't want her to get a fine, so I contacted the library.
Rosemary Rowe in Miami recently started using Rainbow Cleaning Service, who send out, like, three reminder emails whenever there's a cleaning scheduled. "Hey Rainbow guys," I emailed them, "this isn't the right email!" They continued to email me relentlessly and after contacting them three times, I just sent all their stuff to spam.
One of the Rosemarys signed me up for Duolingo. I briefly thought I might try to learn Spanish, since I was getting emails about it every ding dong day. Finally those reminders ceased and then either that Rosemary Rowe or another one signed me up for Duolingo again, but this time German.
One of the American Rosemary Rowes used my gmail address as her Apple ID, which caused a very confusing several minutes for me, as I wondered if someone was trying to hack my Apple account and spend my precious gift card stash. Nooooooo! Fortunately, it seemed to be just another case of a Rosemary Rowe not knowing her own gmail address. It must have taken her awhile to figure it out, because it happened a second time about a week later. I trust she has sorted her shit out by now.
Today, one of the Rosemary Rowes signed me up for Groupon. I'm sure she's wondering where the hell her verification email is. Rosemary - I have it.
I get it when someone emails their Rosemary Rowe using the wrong address - probably they don't remember that it's RosemaryLRowe, or RosemaryRowe43. But when the actual Rosemary Rowe signs up for something and puts their own email address in wrong...that concerns me. Rosemarys - get it together, chicks!
Now, there are other Rosemary Rowes for whom I do not get emails but whom I know exist, thanks to Google alerts. There's a famous Rosemary Rowe, an elderly British author who writes quite gripping historical fiction murder mysteries (I do occasionally get fan mail for her). There's a Rosemary Rowe who is a councillor on the South Hams District Council (she's quoted in her local papers quite often).
On the darker side, there's a Rosemary Rowe who was murdered in Australia in 2010 by a guy who was obsessed with her daughter (whom he also murdered); and another Rosemary Rowe in Tasmania got stabbed by her husband a bunch of times while she was driving, after admitting that she'd had an affair (he's in jail now and she's still kickin').
You guys - Rosemary Rowes are busy people with a lot going on.
I also had one really sweet experience, where this girl wrote me that her mom's name was Rosemary Rowe and her mom had died. She was missing her mom, so she googled her name and found me. She said it was nice to know that there was someone out there with her mom's name who was being alive and funny. I will not lie, you guys...I cried. I wrote her back a nice note and that was that, but I think about her a lot.
One of my many dreams is to make a documentary called "The Other Rosemarys" and track down a bunch of these ladies and go to their countries and just talk to them about what their lives are like. Though I imagine such a documentary would be interesting only to me and other people named Rosemary Rowe. Fortunately, as I have established, it would have a large, built-in audience. Because we are EVERYWHERE.
