Regarding your latest email
April 20, 2011I love my parents and related old-ish people. I do! I love that they're all, to a person, compelled to forward any email they receive that might be viewed as cute, funny, important, or all three. But then they get frustrated with me for not replying. If you're of the Greatest Generation and are wondering why I never respond to such emails, here's what it looks like on my end.
From: Fictional great-aunt
To: Alice Bradley
Subject: FW: Fwd: Fwd: Re: FORWARD: Fwd:
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Thought you guys might want to see this. WOW!!
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Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!
FORWARDED MESSAGE
From: 2319Grandmacutie@aol.com
To: mymailman@aol.com, 193457h@yahoo.com, MyDaughterEileen@hotmail.com, 1sttimeoninternet@optonline.net, Ilovefunnyjokes@yahoo.com, oldyoldensen@hotmail.com, computersfrightenme@nyc.rr.whatever.com, StillHot19u7@aol.com
FUNNY!
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--FWD MESSAGE--
From: StillHot19u7@aol.com
To: asdkuo@hotmail.com, billyjoelis#1@hotmail.com, mythirdcousin@excite.com, guttercleaners@aol.com, windowwashergil1965@aol.com, 2319Grandmacutie@aol.com
TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--ORIGINAL MESSAGE--
From: stevetheaccountant@accountantswestchester.com
To: brendan073467@aol.com, webfiwery@hotmail.com, werewolves@hotmail.com, noteventryingtocomeupwitheasyemailaddress@optonline.net, theinternetfrightensme@excite.com, mygranddaughterconvincedmetoopenanelectronicmailaccount@hotmail.com, sexyjanet@hotmail.com
I thought you guys might like a chuckle and also appreciate this important message about the dangers of something. Amazing but true!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This email account should be used for professional communications only. Do not share the information contained within to any other parties without explicit permission of Accountants of Westchester, Inc. Also do not print this because something something trees. The views contained within do not necessarily reflect the opinions or thoughts of Accountants of Westchester, LLC. Or are we Inc.? Whichever. Hug a tree.
--ORIGINAL ORIGINAL MESSAGE--
From: newsoftheday@prodigy.com
To: stevetheaccountant@accountantswestchester.com
SO funny/dangeorus/sad/true! Did you hear about how
REMAINDER OF EMAIL UNABLE TO DOWNLOAD DUE TO LENGTH
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Reader Comments (74)
Your "family" offers you viagra? Are you sure that's not spam, Mommakiss?
Oh, it gets better for me. My in-laws send some things to us AND those plus many more to my mother. They send her more things because we might have sent a few things back noting that they are totally, obviously and ridiculously untrue. A few hundred.
Then, my mother comes to my house and wants me to open up her email here, so that she can see if she really saw everything there was to see when she opened it at home. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.
For the longest time she had dial-up still, so we convinced her that it just wasn't available for anyone to see. No matter what it was.
But, here are my confessions:
I do send my 20 yo occasional emails, not these kind, I promise, but links that he actually might want (no, really, he's talked about things I've sent without my asking!) Of course, he only looks at email from time to time.
And scariest confession of all I still use my aol.com address. It's from the mid-90s. I figure at a certain point I'll be the only person still using aol mail and will win an award. Or that there will be a vintage items blog and it will feature my address. I have the same one on gmail.com but don't really use it for mail and several other random email addresses, but have never made the switch.
I wonder sometimes at night what the annoying things are that I will do that baffle my children. I rest easy knowing it will come naturally.
I must be a little bit lucky because so far I don't receive a flood of cute stuff. (And trust me, I'm (they're) old enough.) What I do get - and only from one person - are THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!!! emails laced with references to prophecies, politics, and demographics. The kind that are meant to strike terror into the heart. I could do without those.
My mother sends me ALL the political ones. Of course, she and I are on different sides of the political fence. I've asked her nicely not to send these on to everyone in her mailbox, but it's like she can't hear me. And she believes that if it's out there "on the internet thingy", or if a friend of a friend of a friend sent it, then it's got to be true. Grrrr... Delete!
Fortunately my parents are awesome bleeding-heart liberals like myself. None of the emails I refer to above are, for the record, "grr"-worthy. They just crack me up.
Everyone tread lightly in these comments, as MY FAMILY is reading. So comments like "I know what you mean, I hate my mom's emails, too!" might make someone sad. Which is the last thing I want.
Did I mention that I love my mom?
There are a couple of people in my family whose names arriving in my inbox have me loading Snopes in preparation before I've even opened their email.
This made me very, very happy.
Surely, there must be a PSA addressing this issue by now?
You brought out the wheeze laugh in me. heeeeee
Ha. Love this too. I once replied asking that a relative please not forward any jokes or warnings, since I'm on the internet ALL DAY LONG with my job and typically I've seen whatever they're forwarding six months ago. They were highly offended, although I still don't get why. It was a warning about Pantene shampoo and cancer or something. I suppose it made sense to them that I wouldn't know if they didn't forward it.
I want to be related to oldyoldensen.
True story: my dad sends me photographs of ghosts. Obvious fakes that were debunked, like, 30 years ago. He insists they're all real and that I would totally want to see them. They all start with the same thing. "Dear Jenny, Your dad wanted me to send you this because he still doesn't know how to email things. I'm so sorry. Love, mom"
It's kind of awesome.
Also, I love your mom. But not as much as my dad who sends me ghost pictures. You can't beat a good ghost picture.
Bahahaha! "It's funny, cause it's true"
Unless you are an incredibly youthful 62, you are not the same age as my mother. I guess I do have some relatively internet-savvy relatives, though - my grandma is 86 and kicking it on Facebook.
On a related note: what is funny about cats that talk like Jamaicans?
My favorite is the tag-team effect. One parent will send out a forward to everyone on the email list. Two hours/days/weeks later the other parent (having just received this really funny/important/interesting email) will send it out to everyone on their email list. 90% of these names overlap. I've tried explaining to look and see if I was on the original list - which only prompts a specific forward with the note "Have you seen this one?"
I actually set up a special email account for relatives who send me a lot of this stuff. Usually I just forward back to everyone on that contact list. If you can't beat them, join them!
I told my mother it would get me fired if she sent me e-mails like that to work. So she prints them out and makes me read them when I visit. Ug.
But that one about the four thugs in the maroon van who go from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart looking for women to kidnap?
TOTALLY needed to be forwarded, for your safety. Clearly.
These are the only emails I get from my grandmother. The only way I'll ever learn about actual family news is if it becomes an Internet meme within the Republican National Party.
Do you ever get the PPT attachments? My husband's grandfather sends us these HUGE emails with PPT shows-WITH MUSIC- of, like, Italy or Israel or France. And then he'll be like, "did you see the PPT?? It's so amazing!" And then we'll be like, "We can just see these pictures individually on flickr," except it would take forever to explain what flickr is. Basically, he sends us the whole internet every day.
Oh. and yes.
All the time. From my 3 sisters.
This is extra fun when it is an email with dozens of pictures of bunnies and kittehs, and Winnie the Poohs, and I accidentally hit open instead of delete on my Blackberry. And then, said Blackberry freezes, and I have to pull the battery to reboot.
Oh, and my other favorite: If you don't forward this to 8 people, you will be cursed! And you count the amount of people they forwarded it to, and it is always exactly 8.
So true! And let us not forget: "If you don't send this to 382 people in the next 12 minutes, you will have bad luck for the next 18 years."