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Some mothers show their affection by checking in with their grown children on the phone every day. Other moms send cards or small gifts in the mail.
My own mother lets me know she cares by forwarding me emails. Lots of them.
FWD: KILLER TARGETING SOLO FEMALE SHOPPERS!!
FWD: SERIAL RAPIST LOOKING FOR MOMS WITH YOUNG CHILDREN!!
FWD: CANCER-CAUSING AGENT FOUND IN CHEESEBURGERS!!
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“Mom, you’re forwarding me too many emails,” I said after a record 15-forward day. “And most of them aren’t even true.”
“Of course they’re true,” she said, offended. “You can look them up if you don’t believe me.”
“Or you can look them up before you forward them and then you won’t have scared 20 of your friends,” I countered.
“You know I don’t have time to do that. I lead a very busy life. I don’t even have time to read all of them. I just send them on.”
I clenched my teeth. If only there were email police, surely she’d get a citation for this blatant breach of forwarding etiquette.
“Anyway,” she continued. “You’ll be happy to know that your daddy submitted the forward about cheeseburgers to Truth or Dare, but he hasn’t heard back from them yet.”
“Do what?”
“That website you told me about. Truth or Dare.”
“You mean the urban legend site? Snopes?”
“Whatever. Anyway, he sent it so they could run it through their system and then tell him whether it’s true or not. But they haven’t replied, so I just went ahead and sent it on.”
Apparently, my mother had decided that the Snopes people have a special contraption resembling a fax machine that scans email forwards and then stamps them either TRUE or, uh, DARE.
“Mom, you just go to the website yourself and do a search. You just type in, like, ‘cheeseburger’ and ‘cancer’ and the research on that email will come up.”
“Yes.” She sounded annoyed. “And I told you, Truth or Dare hasn’t responded.”
After that botched conversation, I really had no other choice. It was time to fight forwards with forwards.
Since then, every time my mom has sent me a forward, I’ve “forwarded” one back, after tailoring it to make it a more interesting read.
FWD: WHAT LIES BENEATH (THE TOILET SEAT)!!
I typed in this subject line with great satisfaction, after finding a forward about a rare, highly poisonous and totally fake South African spider that supposedly had been hiding under toilet seats at restaurants and biting unsuspecting squatters. I changed the spider-plagued city to my mom’s town, the restaurant to her favorite lunch spot and sent it straight to her inbox.
FWD: SNAKES ON A PLAIN…OL’ DEPARTMENT STORE BASKET!
The next day, I emailed her a completely false warning I found about a woman at a department store who put her hand inside an imported wicker basket, was bitten by a poisonous snake, and dropped dead right in the middle of housewares.
FWD: MY LIPS ARE SEALED. PERMANENTLY!
Two days later, I passed on a bogus forward about the presence of lead in lipsticks, complete with a list of offenders that included all her favorites. I even added a No. 9 at the bottom that said, “Pretty much any lipstick you’d find in the Tod’s handbag of a Symphony Guild member,” in the event that I’d left out one of her trusted brands.
“So did you get my emails, Mom?” I asked the next time I talked to her on the phone.
“Yes! Are you trying to scare me to death?”
“Gosh,” I said, wounded, “I just don’t want you to be bitten on the butt by a deadly spider the next time you go out to eat.”
“Don’t worry, darling, I’d gotten that one before,” she said knowledgeably. “I always check for spiders under the seat. I’m just glad you know about them now.”
“Yes, but what about the lipstick?” I pressed. “I hope you’re not wearing any right now.”
“Well, of course I am,” she said breezily. “I’ve known about the lead for years. My girlfriends and I have talked about it and there’s no way any of us are going to stop wearing lipstick. We figure everyone has to die somehow.”
“And the snake in the basket?”
“Now that was a new one. I’m having Daddy run it through Truth or Dare,” she said. Because if there are deadly snakes at Saks, then we’ve got a problem.”
Dammit to hell. I should’ve known better than to try and beat a master forwarder at her own game.
Now I’m just wondering what kind of dare I’ll have to complete after my phony forward is spit out of her special Snopes machine.