An Open Letter

Dear friends and family:

You are the privileged few. You are among the elite. You have been given that which I guard with every keystroke. You, my friends, have access to my personal email address.

Do you even realize the enormity of that entitlement? You haven't been directed to the spam account, or the yahoo account, or my blog email, or the email with no identifying information in it, or even the old personal account which is still active and spam-laden. Oh, no. You my honored friend, have THE address; the one that stays open all day; the one to which my beautiful and adoring husband sends his messages of endearment.

And yet, some of you continue to break the rules.

You insert your replies at the bottom of the message (annoying, but forgivable).

You copy multiple recipients without using a private newsgroup name or hiding MY email address from THOSE strangers (crossing the line, but still forgivable).

And you forward random, inane, ridiculous, offensive, retarded, and just plain annoying emails (absolutely unacceptable and worthy of eternal banishment).

Hello, people, this is not 1996 any longer.

If I wanted to watch videos of other people's babies shooting powder out of their hiney's, I would check them out on YouTube (but Dear God, if you ever catch me doing so, please shoot).

If I was interested in every sick child in America's dying wish, I would donate money to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

And if you think that I am emotionally touched by sickeningly sweet poems about motherhood, well then, you obviously don't know me well enough to have THE email address.

And don't even get me started on the urban legends. A very loud "GRRRRR" will suffice.

So, dearest loved ones, I have come up with a set of rules for using the forward button in your email client.

Rule Number One:

Don't

Rule Number Two:

For the love of God, check with Snopes first to get the scoop on rumors. Yes, it has been pointed out to me by a conspiracy-loving in-law that we don't really know if Snopes is telling the truth, but let's just take it on faith that the US Mint knows more about it's own coins than the great-uncle who thinks that Elvis is living on the dark side of the moon. And even if the rumor is true, it may be incredibly out-of-date. That little boy in Texas who wants to collect the most postcards ever before he dies of cancer? Hate to tell you, but he died in 1987.

Rule Number Three:

If you absolutely must forward an email, at least have the common courtesy to copy the content which is so vital to my survival into the body of your email and erase the sixty-seven "FW:" out of the subject line. I can guarantee that if I have to open an attachment (which opens an attachment, which opens an attachment...), I will junk it before you can say "spam."

Rule Number Four:

Know thy recipient. Ask yourself, "Would Jenni like this?" Chances are, if it includes puppies, kittens, other people's children, racist undertones, or anything a middle-school boy would find interesting (including bodily functions, people getting hurt or b00bs), I will not like it. If, however, it includes oblivious grammatical errors, or horrendous cakes, I may enjoy it. On second thought, as I can get the former at Failblog, and the latter at Cakewrecks, don't bother.

Rule Number Five:

Don't

That is all. Have a lovely evening, and I expect to see far fewer emails in my precious inbox tomorrow.