I've been a mail addict for ages.

It started somewhere around fourth grade, I suppose, maybe earlier. Whenever it was that I got my first magazine subscriptions, to The Electric Company Magazine, 3-2-1 Contact, and Odyssey. Junk mail followed in their wake. Lots of it.

My favorite, back then, had ATTENTION, U.S. VETERAN! emblazoned across the envelope, and tried to get me to sign up for a credit card, if I remember correctly. This, sent to a kid in elementary school. I loved it. And from that point onwards, the first words out of my mouth when I got home were "Did I get any mail?"

The advent of e-mail has only made things worse. I check my mail compulsively, constantly, whenever I get the chance to. The worst thing about "three-day holidays" -- when a major, two-day, Jewish holiday falls out just before, or just after, Saturday -- I have decided, is that I can't check my mail for three days. Torture.

This is especially true on paper, where having to actually write things down in print, or type them up and print them out, can itself take ages. But then, I have to actually find an envelope, get a stamp, and drop the letter off in a mailbox. A few months later, when I've finally about to get around to that, there's no point in doing so, because the letter is already out of date.

In e-mail, it's not quite so bad, but I still have a backlog the size of Mount Everest. In general, there are two broad categories for e-mail that gets consigned to the backlog:

1. Mail that I can't think of anything to reply with.

   Sometimes I get mail that I agree with, that either makes a good point, or that just says something nice, which I don't really have anything to add to. I have trouble figuring out how to respond in such cases.

2. Mail that I really want to consider properly before I reply.

   This is the reverse problem, I suppose. Sometimes I get a really interesting e-mail, which I want to carefully consider, so that I can give it the full, well-reasoned reply that it deserves.

   What happens, of course is that I end up not answering it altogether, as it gets buried in new mail, and it gets harder to get back to it as time goes on.

I am fuming.

I'm supposed to be meeting him, together with the Senior Editor, on Thursday. The Senior Editor is still optimistic about us working things out. I wish I could say the same.

I'll try to put the actual column up soon, along with the background information needed for the sentence in question.

In his defense, he did claim that that message was sent out accidentally, and, well, this was e-mail. On the other hand, I do have to grant that his columns have had any number of similar examples. Spelling isn't his strongest point, alas.

And, yes, part of me took some perverse pleasure in noting that, under the circumstances.