Hi Mr. Smith!
I know you’ve been telling me to call you “Frank” for years, but I just can’t do it. It seems so disrespectful, plus four decades of calling you “Mr. Smith” is a hard habit to break. Anyway, Mr. Smith, I wanted to chat with you about the emails that you forward to my dad, because he usually forwards them on to me. Isn’t it fun how you both have AOL email addresses?
Anyway, may I make a request? If you are going to forward something to Dad, hit “Forward” and then – and this is important – delete all the rows and rows and rows of text and empty spaces that come before the actual joke or ditty or IMPORTANT WARNING you want Dad to read. That means deleting the names of the people who have forwarded it before it got to you, and while you’re at it you can delete their comments of “You won’t believe this!” or “This is so funny!” Erasing those inches and inches of email headers and the inevitable >>>>>’s that appear will take you some time, but means that my dad won’t get a crick in his finger from scrolling to what you actually want him to read. His arthritis kicks up this time of year.
And on the topic of what you want him to read: can I beg you to do a little smell test first? As in, if it sounds made up, it probably is? Even if your Tuesday morning golf buddy who forwarded the email to you SWEARS that the brother of a former co-worker of his wife really did find a rare Beanie Baby at a church tag sale and later learned it was worth $93,000. Do you think that could really have happened? I seem to remember your wife Betty decorated the living room shelves of your Boca condo with her vast collection of Beanie Babies; just think for a minute about the laws of supply and demand and what kind of Beanie Baby could ever pull $93k cool ones.
Similarly, the story about the septuagenarian kicked out of KFC for breastfeeding her 42 year old son in public? You, and more importantly, Betty, were septuagenarians only five years ago. Does it seem feasible that Betty would have unsnapped her bra back then to feed your son Eric at a KFC? (How is Eric, by the way? Haven’t seen him in years. Please give him my best and ask if he remembers that time in first grade that we sledded into a tree. Good times.)
I may be overstepping here but I’d also like to ask you to refrain from forwarding Dad anything that “proves” that Obama is a communist puppet, a woman in drag, a Canadian, or determined to establish a caliphate on the Atlantic Seaboard. Here’s a quick tip for knowing whether any of those rumors are true: if they originate from a site that includes the words “Liberty,” “Freedom,” “Patriot,” “Reestablishing America’s Greatness,” or “Fox,” then you need to find an independent secondary source before you forward it. Otherwise you’re just spreading uninformed hysteria and I know you don’t want to do that. I seem to remember a lecture you gave me and your daughter Susan on that very topic back in middle school when we were sure one of the neighbors was putting razor blades in the apples she gave out for Halloween.
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Finally, I just want to share a website that I think you and my dad would really enjoy. It’s called Snopes.com. Check it out.
With affection, and a big hug to Betty,
Nancy
P.S. Please feel free to forward this to all your friends.
P.P.S. Keep the videos of moose being extricated from vacation homes coming. I don’t know where you find those!
