Hello there, Canada

In the last two days something interesting has happened here on our humble little blog.  We’ve had 978 hits from The Great White North.  In 48 hours.

I wish I could tell you that something one of us had written was brilliantly funny or had gone viral, but somehow I doubt that’s the case.  While both days were fairly international and we did have visitors from around the world and, indeed, our total hit count was more than just the Canadian total for both days, something’s up.

I have a theory.

I think that perhaps my Canadian husband is reading all about me.  For those who don’t remember, my super public gmail address has this ongoing problem.  There seems to be a group of women with my name all around the English speaking world who do not understand that my email address, Kelly.Hopkins AT gmail.com is also KellyHopkins at gmail.com is also Kelly.Hopkins AT googlemail.com is also KellyHopkins AT googlemail.com.

Solving this problem has involved businesses all over the US, contacting doctors, schools, real estate agents, and every kind of business you can imagine to tell them that, no, I am not the Kelly Hopkins they are looking for.  This is apparently what I get for 1) having a super common name and 2) there being a lot of people in the world who don’t know how to type their own email address.

One of the longest running problems was with this guy in Ontario, Ken Hopkins.  This guy has added me on Google+ and seems to think that my email address is that of his wife and mother of his child(ren).  Now, here’s the thing.  If you pay any attention whatsoever to this blog you know that 1) I don’t live in Canada, 2) I’m married to Geoff, and 3) we have no human children.

So about 2 years ago when I started getting email about Ken’s daughter from her school, I was slightly amused and more than a little surprised.  I did a little homework, figured out the name of the school district, the name of “my kid” and the name of “my spouse”.  Hence, the linked post above.  I also did what a responsible netizen would do, I email the school, repeatedly, and tried to get them to understand that my email address was not actually for Ken’s wife.

It took more than a year and it finally took calling the school, an international call, mind you, and talking to someone in person, to get them to stop emailing me.  In the interim I had been able to excuse “my kid” from school via email.  Let that sink in, will you?  I was able to excuse a total stranger’s kid from school because this guy or his wife, not sure which, had no clue that the email address they gave the school wasn’t accurate.  I tried over and over again to get the problem fixed and eventually had to pay to get my information out of their system.  To be fair when I called and explained that I wasn’t the Kelly Hopkins they thought I was, they were horrified.

Shortly thereafter, Ken started following me on Google+ (who says that platform is dead??) which I thought was odd.  I didn’t add him back, I just ignored him.  After all, as much as I love Canada, I didn’t know this guy from Adam and even though we have the same last name, we’re not actually related.  And, as Geoff pointed out, we don’t know where his wife is or what happened to her.  Hmmm.

You see, it is rather odd that this guy has an erroneous email address on file at his kid’s middle school and that when I call they assume I am this kid’s mom.  Almost as if they hadn’t talked to her in a while…  And then he goes and follows me on Google+.  Any guesses on where she is?  Did she run off?  Is she buried in the basement?  Was she carried off by a polar bear?  No idea.

As I write this we’ve had less than 10 hits today, so I’m going to assume that the Canadian deluge is over.  Someone read through everything on our site, some posts more than once.  Maybe it was a fluke, maybe it was someone searching for a missing person, or maybe it’s someone who thinks we’re really funny, eh?  Who knows?  Only time will tell.

~Kelly