By Sue Murphy
Between 8:00 Monday night and 8:00 Tuesday morning, I received 67 emails. It’s like that most days. You’d think I was wildly popular, but my morning scroll always begins with delete, delete, delete.
I do this even though a lot of these messages purport to hold fabulous news. A grant that I never applied for has been approved. The interview that I requested (when did I do that?) has been scheduled, and I have been awarded $50 gift cards all over town. Apparently, I am one lucky gal!
Forget the CDC and FDA and all those other letter-type honchos, these email people have discovered the cure for tinnitus and plantar warts and erectile dysfunction. They have some inside track that can get me car insurance for pennies, CBD gummies by the caseload and cruises to the Bahamas when no cruise line I know is sailing right now. How do they do it?
Curiously, for all of their inside connections, they are not very good spellers. Perhaps that is the job I would get if I went to the interview. Maybe that’s what the grant is for – hiring a spellchecker for these generous business folks. Goodness knows they could use one.
In other emails, the spelling is just fine, perhaps because these writers are tucked away in the upper echelons of government, so well-connected that they have first-hand knowledge of every DISGUSTING thing a politician’s distant relative has been up to. They feel compelled to share this breaking news because they are patriots, my friends, independent American patriots. I know that because they say so right in their tag lines, and they feel so morally charged about what they do that they must speak in CAPITAL LETTERS. Not Capitol, although I suspect that word gets mentioned a lot.
I couldn’t tell you for sure, because I never open the emails. Unless I know you personally or have shopped on your website, I can’t take the chance. There are hackers afoot and people who make their livings by cheating unsuspecting victims out of theirs. Some want to steal your identity, and to be honest, there are days when I think, “Go ahead, you try being me for a change,” but I don’t have time for the paperwork. And so, I do not open the emails.
This must be a huge disappointment to these persistent writers. I mean, they have worked so hard to gather all this information, just to be discarded with a click of a button. In a less-buyer-beware web world, I would write these people back. I don’t know any DISGUSTING things anyone has done right now, but perhaps they would be interested in a few GOOD things, a few NOBLE pursuits, a string of KIND gestures I’ve been privy to. After all that EVIL, I would think they would be ready for a little sunshine.
At the very least, I should let all these writers know I am summarily deleting their messages without reading them. Some I send to the junk folder first, hoping to send the message that, sadly (for them), I am not their target audience. I claim no political affiliation. I have a trusted podiatrist and a reliable insurance agent. I think it unwise to ingest something that is shipped to me from a pharmacy in Pago Pago, and although I am sure they are fine people, I do not set out each morning hoping to meet beautiful Asian women.
All this to say, sorry, you dedicated purveyors of email oddities (read: junk). You’ll have to look elsewhere. Delete, delete, delete.
