Halloween Hauntings

Some people claim to be haunted by dead relatives, or former residents of their creepy old houses, or other human revenants. Rob and I are being haunted by something much less tangible.

Our Old Mailing Address.

Yes, it's true. I have three instances--all recent--of the sudden and very untimely (i.e., three years late) reappearance of our former address. (Notice that all the important numbers are threes, which is also the number of digits in our old and our new street addresses. Spooky-spooky-spooky!)

Haunting #1: Rob went to the optometrist in Berkeley to get fitted for new contacts and glasses. He went to pick up the contacts, and the glasses were going to be mailed to him. Three weeks ago or so, he realized that the glasses had not arrived. When he called Dr. Sarver's office, they found that they had mailed them to our old address...DESPITE the fact that they knew perfectly well that we have a new address and that they have said address on file. So Rob had to go leave a post-it on the door of our old house and ask them to call and let us know if they got a random package from the optometrist. But they didn't. Spooooooky!

Haunting #2: On Saturday, I was preparing envelopes to send contest entries to Smartwriters, Inkwell, and Del Sol Press. Two had entry forms, but one needed a cover letter, so I printed one out. When I went to sign it, I noticed that for no good reason, the letterhead had MY OLD ADDRESS in it. Now, I know I have updated the letterhead but this freaked me out because I had used a cover letter from earlier this summer as a template. Although their having my incorrect info was moot, as I did not place in the contest, I knew this meant I had used a cover letter with the wrong mailing address. This freaked me out further, wondering how many other journals, etc. had received cover letters with my old mailing address. Fortunately, when I checked all my cover letter files the answer was none. But still: SPOOKY! And also sloppy on my part.

Haunting #3: For the past two weeks I have been expecting an envelope with some important bank-account-related paperwork for a nonprofit organization I'm vice-president of. I have seen neither hide nor hair (nor manila fiber, as the case may be) of it. Yesterday, our president realized that he had mistakenly pulled up the wrong address list and sent it to: OUR OLD ADDRESS. Where we have not lived for three years, I'd like to once again point out. Moreover, it turns out that my address in the non-profit's database is still the old address, too, which is odd. Spo-oo-oo-ooky.

I realize that this may be the most boring, mundane instance of haunting ever. But hey, it's the best I can do. Now I'm off to carve pumpkins with Pac-Man and Ghost on them.