The Forwarder

I have a very dear friend who has a serious addiction problem. She is addicted to forwarding emails. I didn't realize this was something you could become addicted to, until I met Rose. Frankly, she's so addicted that when she meets new people and asks them for their email address, I will jump across table to try to prevent them from giving it to her before it's too late.

It's always too late. Rose can get email address faster than those spammer people do. And even though I know it's ridiculous crazy stuff that she forwards, because it's from my friend I can't NOT read it. That is not an option.

The funny thing is that many of her forwards are contradictory. She claims to have liberal values and then will send forwards out bashing liberals. She claims to not be an overtly devout person and then sends me Rosary poems. It's CRAZY, I tell you.

She sends many of the AOL or Gap or Outback Steakhouse will rebate you money if you forward this to enough people. Scott has demanded the money from her that he is entitled to from all the times she's forwarded this.

But the ones I find the most outrageous are the "people have died because they failed to follow simple instructions to keep this forward going." Um, that's a chain letter, Rose.

You don't believe that there are still forwards that say people will die if you don't forward it? HA! Read on -- this is an ACTUAL line from an ACTUAL Rose forward...

">CASE 1: Kelly Sedey had one wish, for her boyfriend of three years, David Marsden, to propose to her. Then one day when she was out to lunch David proposed! She accepted, but then had to leave because she had a meeting in 20 min. When she got to her office, she noticed on her computer she had some e-mail's.>She checked it, the usual stufffrom her friends, but then she saw one> that she had never gotten before.>It was this poem. She simply deleted it without even reading all of it. BIG MISTAKE! Later that evening, she received a phone call from the police It was about DAVID! He had been in an accident with an 18 wheeler. He didn't survive!<"

There were two more cases after this one, the next one almost as comical. Basically, the poor girl didn't have enough people's email addresses to forward it to, so she too met an unfortunate vehicular fate. (Note: Who does not have at least 10 people's email addresses if their LIVES depended on it? Is she homeless??) Luckily, in the last case, the man was wise enough to IMMEDIATELY send the forward on, not wanting to press his 3 hour forward window (bad luck operators are standing by to fuck up your life if you do not comply with our wishes) and met his first true love walking down the street (she was a hooker) and they got married and have three beautiful children who eat all of their vegetable and don't talk to strangers or put strange things up their noses.

No, I'm not going to post the silly poem here. I would inadvertently be complying with the forward requirement... Well, maybe not -- do 10 people even read my blog? Doubtful! It's basically a Hallmark-y kind of thing saying if you don't keep in touch with your friends then they're going to die and won't you be sorry.

Sheesh, if you weren't so busy forwarding them chain letters you'd probably have time to keep in touch before they died, don't you think?

I replied to my friend Rose and said that I was NOT going to forward it to anyone and if bad bad things happened to me it was ALL on her for sending me the bad luck charm in the first place. After all, if I had never received the poem then not forwarding it would have caused me NO ill will.

Of course, then again I did have a too-short haircut today, so perhaps this is advanced punishment for knowing I wouldn't forward the poem. (Aww, don't freak out L -- the bangs were just shorter than I anticipated. And surprise -- Scott liked the cut a lot but wanted blonder... Some men are just more impossible than others.)

So, if I die from Rose's forward, I want to tell the world that I loved every minute of it!! Well, except for the Tom years, but other than that!