Columnist Melissa Schorr: Run for your lives -- It's Melissa!

It's not every day they name a virus after you.

I'd hardly logged on to my computer last week when the news hit: A horrible new virus was spreading around the Internet, taking out every computer system in its way. The FBI was launching a cyber-investigation. Even mighty Microsoft had succumbed.

The lethal virus' name? Melissa.

Funny, because I'd never felt better.

But within 10 minutes, three people had excitedly e-mailed news on the virus to me, thinking, I suppose, that I'd be tickled by the coincidence.

(I also sensed some passive-aggressive intent in their forward forwardings, i.e.: See Melissa, you're so wretched, they've even named a computer malady after you.)

The Web was abuzz with the news. Zdnet.com., a computer-oriented website, had prepared an entire news package entitled "Melissa's Rampage: A Special Report," replete with a boxed graphic. The "not-so-lovely Melissa" sniped one headline. "How do you feel having a virus named after you? Do you feel like Typhoid Mary?" the Sun's webmaster quipped.

I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel about all this attention. Flattered? Ashamed? Slandered?

I'd never really had anything named after me before, although there is a brand of pickles named Schorr's Pickles. Melissa may have been one of the most popular names of the '70s, but few of us have achieved much fame to date -- unless you want to count Joan Rivers' kid. I don't.

But how, I pondered, did the computer virus get my name? Had the programmer who discovered it just been dumped by a girl named Melissa?

An early news report suggested the virus contained a list of passwords to adult websites; the name "Melissa" appeared somewhere in the coding. In other words, some cyber hussy had disgraced my fair name! Later, it came out that the alleged virus' progenitor had named it himself -- after his favorite topless dancer.

I remembered that my friend Fran had a hurricane named after her a few years ago, so I asked her for guidance on how to deal with my name's newfound notoriety.

"I actually enjoyed sharing my name with a hurricane," she responded. "I guess you could think of a hurricane as something negative which destroys, but I thought of it in a positive way, like something powerful and important."

Yes, but would anyone have the nerve to open my e-mails again, coming as they did with the lethal "Melissa" moniker? Would I become an online pariah? The e-mail version on an untouchable? An unopenable?

If a computer announces "You've Got Mail!" but no one is willing to click, did your words ever really exist?

Or, on a less existentialist note, could I really screw with people's minds if I sent them messages disguised as the virus? You bet. So for the rest of the day, I cheerfully entitled all my missives with the verboten words "Important Message From (Melissa)"

The fear in their typeface was palpable: "I erased it. What was in it?" one recipient cautiously e-mailed back. "Did you send me the virus?"

Powerful and important, alright. By the end of the week, the virus had mutated into new versions named Papa, Mad Cow and Syndicate, but all were described as wimpier than the Mighty Melissa. The world's computers were feeling a little better -- and so was I.

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