Stamford native Tessa Lindt has been using the email address tessalindt1986@aol.com since 1999. With Lindt’s 30th birthday on May 8th, she is wondering for the first time if the convenience is worth everyone knowing she is 30.
“When my parents helped me sign up for AOL when I was 13, I begged them to let me make a fun screen name, like angelx0devil18 or lisax0x0frank310,” Lindt said. “But they convinced me to go the more practical route.”
Lindt went on to resent her parents for this over the next few years, but as she got older, she became grateful to have such a mature email address.
“My mother and society and the media have taught me that a lady should never reveal how old she is,” Lindt said. “I always thought that was an antiquated load of crap but now I’m starting to understand it.”
“If I knew that email would still be around when Tessa turned 30, I definitely wouldn’t have forced her to include her birth year,” said her mother Georgia Lindt, age undisclosed. “Luckily I made mine something timeless – NathansWife@aol.com.”
Most women on the cusp of 30 have replaced “fun” interest or identity-driven email addresses in favor of simpler ones that refer exclusively to their lawful name. Addresses with “age-telegraphers” were among the first to go among most millennial women. However, Lindt is late to the trend.
“People have been telling me to change it since like 2002,” she added. “But it just seemed like a lot of work.”
While Lindt is adamant about not wanting people to know she has been alive for three decades, she cannot bear to part with her meticulously organized inbox with 25 folders and a well-maintained archive. “I realize I have been more devoted to my tessalindt1986@aol.com inbox than I’ve ever been to a man, or anything,” Lindt shared, gently stroking her eight-year-old Dell laptop.
The whole situation has become a haunting internal back-and-forth for Lindt with no clear solution.
At press time, Tessa Lindt was meditating on a “two-address solution” one for personal emails and one for professional use, but couldn’t reconcile which address would be given to potential suitors.
“If I could just go back in time. God, would I do things differently.”
