I have a pretty common maiden name. So common that my mom’s best friend happens to have the same last name as my mom does. I used to baby sit for her son and I would use her as a reference. I always had to put no relation in parenthesis. So, they would know I wasn’t giving a family member as a reference. They even team taught together so it I am sure got a little confusing as they worked together at more than one school. I have known her for many years. I was used to knowing a lot of people that I wasn’t related to with my same last name. It was nothing new for me. Until that day……
I was probably a freshman in high school, maybe it started before that, but I would get the mail, there it was. A sorority newsletter for a woman named Amy Lea and my last name. I was like oh they must have had a mix up at the post office, no it was my address. So I did what any good citizen would have done and wrote return to sender on it. It wasn’t a bill or anything but I didn’t want this woman’s sorority newsletter because no one by that name lived there. I didn’t even know the woman. I thought nothing of it and until we received another one a while later. I did the same old return to sender hoping that they would get the hint. Nope. We kept getting them. We started writing No one at this address, wrong address and then eventually we moved. We thought OK hopefully they got the idea that the Amy Lea from their sorority does not live here and the new neighbors can figure out what to do with her sorority newsletters, and letters because return to sender was not working.
Once we were in our new home we were finally relieved to be set free of the Anchora mailings for Ms. Amy Lea. Until, I got the mail and I saw the envelope and it addressed to Amy Lea. I wrote return to sender again. I even told the mailman this person does not and has never lived here. I have no clue who she is. Then it was time for their mailings, once again, there was Amy Lea in my mail box. I think by this time my mom called the sorority and said we keep getting this persons letters and newsletters from you. Please stop sending them you have the wrong addresses. She did it politely of course. The letters and newsletters stopped. We used to make jokes about which of us was really Amy Lea. I was afraid that I would see that envelope or newsletter waiting for me when I opened my mailbox every time I got the mail. Well by this time we moved again.
I remember getting the mail and the first time I saw another letter or newsletter from the Sorority I said Oh no Mom she’s back! It wasn’t like we were getting this woman’s mail. We were not getting anything of hers other than the sorority mailings. It would be completely different if we were getting her bills and other letters. We did the whole return to sender, calling, writing she doesn’t live here thing again. I think I even tried finding an email address for the sorority. This time it didn’t stop. We just kept sending them back over and over again.
We moved a couple more times, and each time the letters would come. It was like the sorority was stalking us. It wasn’t a forwarded envelope, it was just a typed envelope. We did not know Amy Lea. I think we looked for her in the phone book, and didn’t find one. It was just the strangest thing. When we moved to Florida, the sorority found us there too and the Amy Lea letters and newsletters kept coming. None of our names are close to Amy, we have no Amy’s in our family, not even anything that could be remotely close to Amy. We had done everything short of getting a restraining order against the sorority.
We haven’t received one in a long time, I am scared that tomorrow, when I get the mail, it will be there waiting for me…….
This time if it happens, I will find them, and tell them to kindly knock it off, they have been harassing me through the mail for the last fourteen years.
