>Truth or Dare
>My mother may not know much about computers, but she can forward an e-mail like nobody’s business.
For the last decade, she’s been forwarding every forward that comes her way. The good, the bad and the truly annoying. Pictures of baby animals. Saccharine poems about God. Really bad jokes. And warnings.
Oh. God. The warnings are the worst. Tupperware causes cancer. Rapists are paying children to act like they’re lost in order to attract victims. Cheeseburgers cause cancer. Gang members are targeting single women at the gas station. Make-up causes cancer. Women are dying after sniffing perfume samples they receive in the mail.
When I was younger, I would occasionally look up the most egregious ones at Snopes, a website that debunks urban legends, and send her the research that proved the scary e-mail was false. She didn’t appreciate that very much. It was like I was calling her a liar.
After that, she stopped sending me any e-mails whatsoever. I’d e-mail asking her for a family recipe. I’d get no response. I’d e-mail her with pictures of the girls. No response. I’d e-mail her to request her assistance in negotiations for my life with a tribe of cannibals in a South American rainforest. No response.
But recently, she has decided that I am mature enough to handle what she has to offer. And the forwards have begun again. Three or four a day. I simply delete them and say nothing. Yet sometimes, that’s not enough.
“Did you get that e-mail I sent you about the serial killer who lures women from their homes with a recording of a crying baby?” Mom asked as we chatted on the phone last night.
“Yeah. I got it,” I lied.
“I know you think those things aren’t true, but you can look it up and see for yourself.”
“Or you can look it up and then if it’s not true, you won’t have sent it on and scared 20 of your friends,” I countered.
“You know I don’t have time to do that. I lead a very busy life. I don’t even have time to really read them. I just send them on.”
I clenched my teeth. If only there were e-mail forwarding police, surely they’d give her a citation for this blatant breach of forwarding etiquette.
“Anyway,” she continued. “You’ll be happy to know that Daddy submitted that e-mail to Truth or Dare, but he hasn’t heard back from them yet.”
“Do what?”
“That website you always talk about. Truth or Dare.”
“Snopes?”
“Gesundheit. Anyway, he submitted it so they could run it through, but they haven’t responded yet.”
“Run it through? What are you talking about?”
“You know. Run it through their computer and then tell him whether it’s true or not. But they haven’t responded, so I just went ahead and sent it on to everyone.”
Apparently, my mother has decided that the Snopes people have a special computer that resembles a fax machine. Run an e-mail through and it comes out stamped ‘TRUE’… or, uh, ‘DARE.’
“Mom, you just go to the website and search. You don’t submit anything. You’d just search for, like, ‘serial killer’ and ‘baby recording’ and the research on that e-mail will come up.”
“Yes.” She sounded annoyed. “And I told you Truth or Dare hasn’t responded!”
It was time to change the subject.
Still, I smiled to myself when I got off the phone. I am learning to appreciate the warped reality of my mother. I let my imagination run with it, and wondered what kind of dare she’d receive when the Truth or Dare people got back to her and informed her the e-mail was false. Would she have to go without makeup one evening at the country club? Or avoid Neiman Marcus for an entire month?
We’ll just have to wait and see….
>Bullseye! I can only imagine how many of the comments to follow are going to say you nailed that one. My mom had a cow when my dad finally got a computer and went “online” because she was convinced he would do nothing but sit at the computer all day. Now all I get is forwarded crap that was forwarded from her friends.Classic Lucinda!!!
>My father is the king of forwards. Together, your mother and my dad will rule the world.
>Oh man. My ex-MIL used to forward me all that crap. I used to send her the Snopes stuff too until she finally stopped. It was worth it. Of course, she’s the same woman that asked me to move my birthday party because she had a conflict…
>HA! I told my mom not to open that stuff because it could have a virus or something {heheeh} so she deletes them and I am saved!
>Okay, I wouldn’t find it funny if My mom did this, but, with your mom, it’s pretty funny! Someone at the office I work for forwards to me sticky sweet, life-affirming type e-mails, which always come with guarantees that miracles will happen if you forward it to your five closest friends, and dire warnings about not “breaking the chain.” Naturally, I delete them, but, happily for me, no one from the office ever checks to find out what I do with the junk they send.Cordially,Melora
>Awwww, Lucinda’s cute mama.Truth or Dare. Classic.
>Time to start blaming those people for ruining our lives. Any bit of bad luck we should call them at all hours crying about how you failed to forward the email they sent you to five people. Or perhaps, just get the address Truth or Dare and answer your Mom with DARE, do not forward. It is a wonder we all turned out so normal.
>Awwwwww…It brought back memories of when I worked at a help desk and someone wouldn’t be able to find a document they wrote. They would keep explaining that they had saved it in Word. And try as I might, I couldn’t get them to understand that Word is an app and their document is not saved in it. Very funny.
>hahaha… how funny! I hate all those dumb forwards too! Some people actually think they’ll get rich for forwarding an email! If that was the case, that’s all we’d ever do! I always reply to people with the Snopes address so maybe they’ll learn!
>i’ve never even heard of that snopes thing. i used to be really bad about forwarding everything but i’ve gotten much better. i think. maybe not.
>My son’s aunt (dad’s side) sends this stuff to me quite a lot. I used to send her the Snopes reports debunking the pleas for money, etc. (because she’s very kindhearted and would totally send some scammer a bunch of money to help a fictitious child), and now she pretty much sends me puppy screensavers. Although I’d rather have real personal communication instead of forwards, I do appreciate that she stays in touch at all, even if only on this level. My dad used to forward his “helpful” spam to me when he first got online. He also used to click on the “unsubscribe” links on his junk mails until I told him he was only encouraging more spam by verifying his email address. Ah, online neophytes. Whaddyagonnado? 🙂
>That was SO funny! Reminds me of when I was setting my Mom up with a computer and Internet service.I need to get one of those Truth or Dare fax machines.
>Sign me up for one of them there Truth Or Dare Fax Machines!I wish I could say that forwarding emails is reserved for parents. If only. I have numerous friends who forward the absolute STUPIDEST crap. Today it was all about getting a $500 gift card to Nordstrom if I answered a few questions. Yesterday I received an email that indicated that I would die a slow and agonizing death if I didn’t forward it to 10 people I love the most. At Christmas time, I got the email about the guy who hides behind cars and slashes unsuspecting women’s achilles tendons and snatches their shopping bags. I have gotten that one FIVE YEARS IN A ROW!So did not mean to bogart your blog. Mea culpa!
>Stop it! This is too freaking hilarious.How about the forwarded forwarded forwards that you get to click on 79 times before you get the actual email? I how I love those.I think Snopes will take “the dare”, btw.
>I have an uncle who used to send me all that crap until I sent him the Snopes info one too many times… I don’t hear from him much anymore. All of my mother’s siblings are like this. “But I read it on the internet! It must be true.”Truth or Dare… hee!
>I have a form letter that I send to people who continually forward me ‘false warnings’. It takes too long to type, so I won’t give it to you word for word, but it goes like this:Your email has been rejected because the last personal interaction you had with this person was more than six months ago. Try contacting by phone if the need is urgent.It has been quite effective within my family!
>You definitely DID nail this one perfectly. If I had the time, or if I gave a shit, I’d forward the Snopes site to every one of my “friends” who forward all those ignorant warnings to me. Since I’m not going to do that, I simply delete them the way you are doing with your mom’s. (Your mom is quite the character, Lucinda!)
>I want to thank you, once again. I am literally laughing out loud. Making noise and everything. My husband thinks i’ve lost it. Anyhow, that could TOTALLY be my mom you were writing about. Hilarious.
>HHmmmm…still wondering how she got “Truth or Dare” out of “Snopes”…gotta love those moms and dads! :)(BTW, she is still better than my Gram, god bless her, who won’t even turn on a PC ’cause she’s “afraid of breaking it”)
>Oh, Lord, this reminds me of my mom, who used to cut out everything she found in the newspaper like this and send them all to me in a big manila envelope once a month. At least you can delete…LOL
>My mom sends those too, but I don’t have the heart to tell her about the untruthiness of them. So I let them sit in my box for a couple of days and quietly delete them.
>I literally laughed out loud when I got to this part:”Run an e-mail through and it comes out stamped ‘TRUE’… or, uh, ‘DARE.'”You crack me up, Lucinda.
>You are too funny.I posted once teasing my Mom about her inability to decipher the URL of my blog (blop? blob? no www? are you SURE?) but of course that was the ONE she read so she got a little nose out of joint. No more posts on Mom!
>I have a family friend who used to send me all kinds of forwards. It drove me up the wall.I had to change my email address a couple of months ago and when I sent her an email to inform her, I slipped in a little joke about not sending me any spam. She emailed me back with an “or what?” message. I wrote her back and said “or all your emails will be sent to my bulk mail folder and deleted, sight unseen”.I haven’t seen any forwards from her since.
>I HATE the forwards! HATE ‘EM!
>OMG. I could totally sympathize with you. My SIL sends that crap. Somehow her neighbor got our email and for some reason feels she should also forward us stupid crap herself. I also HATE those ones that freeze up your computer while it’s loading up the stupid music in the background about how life is short or how nice I really am, blahblahblah. And the SIL’s neighbor? Also feels she should send us those dumb pictures of half naked women or men. It really irks the crap out of me.
>Oh my. We should sooooo mess with your mother!!
>LOL! I completely understand. My father-in-law is the same way. Friday I sent a snarky response to his forwards, and he hasn’t sent anything since. Hee hee hee hee hee. My inbox looks so much better!!
>My late Mom used to send me clippings from mags and newspapers, etc. (that was before internet!) It was usually a little more reputable stuff – health issues, kid-raising and such.Your Momma just LOVES you Lucinda and is trying to protect you from all the evils of the world!
>”Snopes.””Gesundheit.”Will you marry me?
>OMG. Almost the exact scenario with my own mother. Except now she calls me and asks me to check out Snopes stuff over the phone instead of forwarding it. ;-)Too funny!