If you were the recipient
Of so-called jokes on your e-mail
Which positively don’t regale,
And which you are expected to
Send along to others who
In their turn can only mutter
For adding to their e-mail…
By Muriel Lilker
“You too would grumble and lament
If you were the recipient
Of so-called jokes on your e-mail
Which positively don’t regale,
And which you are expected to
Send along to others who
In their turn can only mutter
For adding to their e-mail clutter.
Desist, I beg, and don’t again
Communicate, except by pen!”
And yet they will communicate again, and again and again. E-mail is the most exciting thing that’s happened to some people in half a century, and they unrelentingly send out jokes to everyone they know.
Is this why I got a computer? Is this why I spent hours learning how to use it? So that I open it to still more jokes about the priest, the minister and the rabbi?
But at least I get those. Do you know what it’s like when you don’t understand a joke, and you don’t want the sender to know, because you don’t like him that much to begin with? So I just respond with something like “Wow, that’s really original. Good for you!”
Guess what’s next on the screen, while I’m still waiting for something exciting that makes this whole Internet business worthwhile. A cause! An impassioned plea imploring my help for some crisis I’ve never heard of before. When it’s addressed “To: THE BRIGHTEST PEOPLE I KNOW,” how can I not read on after that? Which is when I find out my support is crucial to bolster a study on wrinkles between the ages of 50 and 90, or a community garden in Staten Island that will wither away if I don’t take immediate action.
I don’t know about your computer, but mine is not used to immediate action. And if it really does know how to forward something, it’s sure not telling me about it. So when the sender urges me to forward this dispatch to “all the other caring people you know,” I only hope enough caring souls respond before that garden is gone forever.
I’ve had enough! Why should I a black rectangle dominate me? I leave it alone for a while, a very short while. I walk this way. I walk that way. Am I missing something vital? News about a sale at a discount house? Or a communiqué from an old friend?
I boot it up. And there it is, an e-mail from a friend I haven’t heard from in months. Eagerly I open it up. There’s no hello, how are you, no let’s get together soon. Instead I’m asked to save the pileated gibbon in the rain forest.
I’ve had it! And so has my house, which I’ve neglected a lot lately. So just don’t ask me for my e-mail address. If you want to get in touch, send me a note. On real paper. Or give me a call. Remember the telephone?
