Chain Letters

Do you remember the chain letters from bygone decades? You’d receive a letter in the mail, were asked to make six copies and send those on to six friends, etc., etc., etc. Often the letters included money (I think this became a criminal offense – and a good thing, too!), or a poem or ‘blessing’ -- all fairly harmless and perhaps even somewhat amusing.

Ah, the days of innocence!

How quaint that now seems in comparison with the electronic chain letters we receive these days and which are sharper, more offensive, threatening even.

I received one of these missiles this week. From someone I know well, with a headline that was sure to lead to me opening it, which I did. There was no connection between the headline and the e-mail’s content. It did not threaten me directly, but it did give gruesome examples of death and disaster that had befallen others who had received this chain letter also and had failed to forward it to twenty people in their address books.

Are some of our friends now becoming terrorists?

I’ve advised the sender that she was out of line in sending me this e-mail, and I hope that is the end of that. No one should engage in this practice; certainly not serious, responsible business people. I had for many years regarded her as such – an image she destroyed with one keystroke.