Wilma's Rules for Forwarding Now
Written by me, approved by Cameron, taped to my monitor at home and at work
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After I went through my whole year of forwards, I sat down and wrote myself some rules. I figured if I'm going to be the Switchboard, I'm going to be a careful one. Feel free to borrow these. Feel free to forward them, even. That one I checked.
Wait one whole day. Anything scary or sad sits in my Inbox overnight before it goes anywhere. If it's true, it'll still be true in the morning. If it's a hoax, Cameron will have found out by then. Look it up first. I go to The Legend Lab, or I ask Cameron, or I ask anybody under thirty who's standing nearby. "This is NOT a hoax!!!" means it probably is. Real news doesn't have to tell you it's real. The newspaper doesn't put that on the front page. Nobody pays you to forward e-mail. Not Bill Gates, not Disney, not a cereal company, nobody. Nobody can even count forwards. I have this one underlined twice. "Send this to everyone you know" means I send it to no one. Everyone I know is ninety-four people. They have enough to read. If a real child needs help, I help through a real hospital or through church, where somebody can tell me the child's name and where the money went. Not through my address book. Take off the arrows. All those >>>> marks down the side, and that long list of other people's e-mail addresses at the top. Those addresses belong to people, and some of those people don't know me from Adam. Use the BCC line. Cameron taught me this. If you put everybody in the BCC box instead of the TO box, nobody sees anybody else's address. My bowling league does not need Pastor Chiasson's e-mail. (He agrees.) Funny is fine, but only for people who want it. There's a list now. I call it the Giggle List and it's thirty-one people who asked to be on it. Evelyn's on it. Pastor Chiasson asked to come off, very nicely, and said he'll read the page instead. Real virus warnings come from the company that makes your virus program, not from your cousin in Muncie. Reading an e-mail can't hurt you. Opening an attachment you weren't expecting can, even when it's from a friend. Especially when it's from a friend. Never use the choir list for anything but choir. See below. Oh, see below. When in doubt, write your own. A little note that says "thinking of you" never needed checking by anybody.
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An Apology to the Chancel Choir
Dear Choir,
In February, Rosetta made an e-mail list of all of us so she could send out rehearsal changes. It was a good idea. I ruined it.
Between the middle of February and the end of March I sent forty-one forwards to the choir list. I counted. Forty-one. Friendship poems, the kitty made out of typing, the Disney trip, the get-well cards for the boy in England, and, on that Tuesday in March, the kidney thieves.
Rosetta's computer is not young. By the week before Easter, her Inbox had so many of my forwards in it that she never saw the message from the church office saying Thursday rehearsal was moving to Wednesday because of the funeral. So Rosetta never sent it on, and on Wednesday night the sopranos and the basses were there and the altos and tenors were home watching television. And on Thursday night the altos and the tenors were standing in a dark sanctuary, and somebody said, "Well, did Wilma send anything?" and everybody laughed, but not in a good way.
And then the kidney thieves. I know for a fact that Harold in the tenors did not go to his grandson's graduation in Chicago because he didn't want to stay in a hotel. Harold, I'm sorry. Your grandson is a fine young man and I hear the ceremony was lovely.
So here is what I have done. I have taken the choir list out of my address book altogether. If Rosetta needs to tell me something, she can tell me, and I won't tell anybody else. I have taken the pledge. And I am bringing the cookies (yes, those cookies, and yes, I know) to rehearsal every Thursday in October.
Thank you for putting up with me. You've all sung with worse altos, but I don't know that you've ever had a worse e-mailer.
With love and a red face,
Wilma
(second row, alto)
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Last updated Saturday, September 25, 1999
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