You can only use another man's e-mail address for so long before he starts canceling your car appointments and insulting your gym buddies. Or so I came to learn as I sank into a joyfully vindictive mood that overwhelmed me for more than a week. This is the story of how one man’s laziness became my justification for being a total jerk.

This is my E-mail War.

Breaking just a little bit bad

If I do say so myself, I have extremely good e-mail etiquette. My personal correspondence is professional when required, touching when appropriate, and never superfluous. But where I truly earn my angel’s wings is with misaddressed e-mail. Just as when I see a child scared and lost in a store, misaddressed e-mail sends anxiety beams straight into my brain, and I am compelled to provide succor and assistance. Thanks to a bizarre username fetish, this happens quite a lot to me.

See, I’m an early adopter, in part because I want my choice in usernames. The day I signed up for Gmail, I happily claimed an unscathed firstname.lastname e-mail address, devoid of such unsightly blemishes as my birth year. And I thought myself rather lucky to have it because it made explaining my e-mail address so very easy.

Then I learned the dark side of a great username: the other citizens of Earth who share my name sometimes direct things to my inbox—usually by accident. Over the years, I have received a shocking number of things that I should not have. I’ve seen the purchase and sale agreement of not one but two homes. I’ve seen architectural plans for changes to one of those homes. I've seen discussions on tax preparation. I've received wanton warnings about lice outbreaks in schools, along with a great number of announcements regarding births, deaths, and barbecues.

"Whether or not I will be rewarded in heaven for my efforts remains to be seen, but the cancellations sure felt righteous."

Through it all, the better angels of my nature shone through. For years, without fail, I would respond to senders and let them know, much as Obi-Wan Kenobi did a long, long time ago, that “I am not the Sesse you are looking for.”

But one guy began using my e-mail address as a spam dump. I first noticed it two years ago, when a certain number of misaddressed e-mails shared two features: 1) they were all throwaway-style messages and 2) they were all from businesses in the same city. It became clear that some clown was giving out my e-mail address to his dentist, his gym, his car dealership, various charities, and several news websites. I was unsubscribing from e-mail lists as quickly as I could, to no avail.

(It wasn’t all bad, though. The guy had apparently decided to sign up for a sporting goods store’s discount card and supplied it with my e-mail. I saved 20 percent off a soccer ball.)

I had no way to contact this man, although I did try at one point to ask a sender to inform the gentleman to stop using my e-mail address. I also told someone from his gym to stop e-mailing me about personal training because “I can and will kick anyone’s ass, dude.”

Yet the e-mails kept coming. So one day, I snapped. After what must have been the 300th e-mail from his auto dealership, I received a message regarding a service appointment for his car. I responded to it, saying that I would not be coming in for this service as I was several hundred miles away. (Which was true!)

It was not without a slight frisson of dark joy that I received another appointment e-mail some 10 days later. Mr. “I am Using Your E-mail as a Spam Dispenser” apparently rescheduled his car appointment. I cancelled his follow-up, too. That was two days ago.

So far, no new e-mails.

Sweet revenge

I realize that “delete” is one of the most technologically important developments since electricity. I know that, through its power, I can temporarily solve the problem. Or I could change e-mail addresses. Or write a much better spam filter for Gmail (which really has gone to crap).

But in the end, knowing that this jackass was purposely annoying me, my normally helpful self gave in to the dark side and helped itself to some revenge. Whether or not I will be rewarded in heaven for my efforts remains to be seen, but the cancellations sure felt righteous.

So much so that I'm almost hoping that another oil change appointment e-mail shows up soon.