We’ve all fantasized about writing, ah, creatively to our respective alumni magazines on behalf of friends and, more likely, enemies. But very few of us have actually done it. (There was the time someone from our high school wrote in saying that a classmate — a gentleman of a certain girth — had hiked Everest.)

Well, Jonathan Nathanson, Yale ’02, has lived the dream. And judging from the correction in the latest issue of Yale Alumni Magazine, it was well worth it:

Nathanson’s struggle teaches us much about the art of making stuff up about other people:

• Make it plausible. A friend’s coming out party is much more likely than, say, his getting hospitalized by a dray of furious squirrels.
• Go the extra mile. If they need an e-mail confirmation, create a dummy e-mail account. If they need verbal confirmation, phone them up. If they need the person to confirm in the flesh, develop Face/Off technology, kidnap him and adopt his life as if you were the real Yale alumnus. 
• Never, never own up. On this count, Nathanson failed miserably. He had plenty of excuses, too, starting with the obvious: that someone was in fact impersonating him, Jonathan Nathanson (which sounds like a fake name in the first place).

Now it’s your turn, Vogel. Revenge submission?