Today, before I’d even had my first cup of coffee, I was faced with a choice that could potentially damn me forever. A coworker forwarded me a story about a little boy with a disability that played a baseball game, became a hero after hitting a Grand Slam (with some help from players on both teams), and then died. Maybe you’ve received the same email. It was heartwarming and made my eyes water just a little bit as I was reading it. After reaching the end of the story however, I was presented with two options. I could either forward the email to everyone I know or just go ahead and delete it. The choices were framed in a way that implied callousness on my part if I chose to just throw the message in the trash folder or, conversely, assured me I’d be an awesome person (maybe eternal salvation?) if I were to just send it along and brighten anyone’s day that opened their email inbox to find this message waiting for them.
I sooooooooooo hate that.
Sending me an email with a joke, picture, or story that I might find interesting is one thing. I have a very broad sense of humor, and I can appreciate even the dirty or off-color stuff. And I’m not so masculine that I won’t cry if something is sad or touching. Not only did I cry when Old Yeller died, but I cried every time Charlie Brown tried to kick the football and missed. My heart melts when I see children ringing the Salvation Army bell outside of Wal-Mart at Christmas time and the tears of joy well up when I see Angelina Jolie grab the stickshift in ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’. But don’t try to make me feel bad because I may not want to send the disabled kid story to a bunch of people who may or may not care about it.
As I was reading it, I thought about the people I knew who might find it nice to get this nugget of bittersweet communication from me. Once I reached the guilt trip at the end though, all thoughts of forwarding the message went out the window. I…deleted it. Not only did I delete it, but I then went into my deleted items folder and deleted it again. I then searched my computer for any hidden, temporary files that might have the text of that story in it, but since I really don’t know that much about computers, I didn’t know where to look. But if I had found it, I would have deleted it a third time. I even briefly considered erasing my hard drive just to make sure the thing was really gone, but decided against it since I have a lot of pictures of Angelina Jolie work stored there. Callous? Yeah, probably, but I’m callous of my own free will. I’ve got enough guilt that I don’t need any more emailed to me. Now if you’ve got some nice pictures of Ms. Jolie, please feel free to send them my way. I promise they won’t be deleted.
Source: www.bookonmarx.wordpress.com