Some Behind the Scenes Reader Drama

Some time ago I received a private message from a reader.

In this note the person claimed to be having an affair with another of my readers. I thought this was the coolest thing. Two readers met on my blog and fell in love! When I inquired further, however, the person mentioned that both are currently married. That made me feel less good. I ceased inquiring.

I try to stay out of drama that doesn’t relate to me.

(but secretly, it’s sort of exciting, too.)

Another time a woman began to write regularly in the comment section of my posts. She was often placing jokes into her comments, and sometimes her jokes would skirt a sexual boundary. I always thought of these quips as funny one-liners, and never took them as serious pick-up attempts. Over time she revealed that her husband was in the military and stationed overseas. Then, in one comment she said something like, “I’d let you warm me up.” It was the punchline to a joke she had set up earlier, but it was a little over the line. I ignored it, but the readers didn’t. They eviscerated this person on my site calling her every name you would expect. I think even “hussy” was thrown around – which is one of my personal favorites.

The woman wrote me a tear-filled apology via email. Then she never commented again.

It’s been at least a year since any exciting gossip has transpired.

Well, it’s time to reset that counter back to zero!

This morning I received an email…

D.J. I’ve discovered a rather nasty little reference to my wife in the comments to your March 20, 2013 posting, “My Ex-Wife Got Married …”. The comment is from “Emily” and my wife’s name is XXXXXXXX. I would greatly appreciate it if you could remove the comment. I look forward to your response.

I went back through the post to search, and the comment “Emily” had written was hilarious. In it she referenced an old-coworker who had an unfortunate last name and also married a guy with an unfortunate last name. When you put them together it made a super-unfortunate last name. And of course, the woman had hyphenated both names. It was gold.

You know those Jay Leno jokes where he shows wedding announcements with funky last names? This was as solid as the best of those.

My initial response was to defend my reader. Screw that guy! A good joke is a good joke.

Then I started thinking more about the situation and I started to see the guy’s point. His wife had probably Googled her own name, found my site, and then read a comment about an ex-coworker goofing on her. She then asked her husband to email me and request that it be removed.

While I’ve only edited a comment once before (out of over 10k), I decided to kowtow this time. I think he was being over-sensitive, but it was the right thing for me to do.

I hated the idea of deleting someone’s comment so I just redacted the name portion of it. I’ve already explained the joke so I won’t reprint it here. You can look it up if you want.

Not fifteen minutes after I removed her name I received an email from the same guy thanking me. He must have been hitting refresh all day long. I never responded to his emails.

Thought I’d share a little ThoughtsFromParis behind-the-scenes drama with you.

Oh, and feel free to post ex-coworkers goofy last names. Most will never find out and we’ll all get a good laugh.