Fwd:...

You know you've seen this in your e-mail in-box. The dreaded "FWD". Okay, it's not always dreaded, but usually you see those letters and just don't have a warm fuzzy feeling about it being there. Attached to that little title is usually some ridiculous e-mail (which is the equivalent to a chain letter, in my opinion) and you have to then forward it to ten people or terrible things will happen to you, your family, your neighborhood...on and on it goes.

Other times it's just something laugh-out-loud hysterical that someone wanted to share with you. And then there are times where it is just a little prayer of some sort that someone is sending your way to let you know that they are praying for you and if you pass it on, you'll be praying for somebody else...and on and on it goes. And then finally there is the kind of 'forwarding' that I have to do at work. When I send out a newsletter, there are just too many e-mails on our mailing list and the only way to send it out to the masses with our server is to use the forward option.

As the receiver, you have no idea until you open the darn e-mail, what kind it is. The newsletter is usually self-explanatory in the subject line, but the others are not. So now you have to take your chance with opening the e-mail. Will you be threatened with bad news, given a big prayer-hug, or just a chuckle. YOU JUST DON'T KNOW!!! Then if you ignore the chain letter type one, you'll question yourself at some point with "Maybe I should have forwarded that?" and ponder the possibility of an Acme Anvil landing on you at some point during your day. OR (and this one I think is funny) you realize that you don't have enough friends to forward it to. But you put in the effort "just in case". Maybe I'll only get a LITTLE bit of bad news if I send it to six people instead of 16.

The worst, and I mean the absolute WORST part of these e-mails, is that they are usually sent to you from people that you can't even get to return a PHONE call to you - but they seem to care (and I use the term loosely and dripped in sarcasm) enough to email you the threat of a horrible day. Oh, thank you, friend. What a lovely way to say that you're still thinking of me, even though I've called you 14 times in the last six months to see how you're doing and amazingly you haven't found the time to call me back. I feel so loved. Sniff, sniff.

It's not even 8:00 in the morning and have already had two "FWD's" in the in-box. Luckily they were both funny but both were from friends that I don't even speak to anymore - not from lack of trying on my part! So hey, next time you get one of those forwards, it's really, really okay if you don't send it to me and I, responding in kind, will think twice before passing one on to you.

Deal?