Chain of Fools

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to confess my own interaction with chain letters. In elementary school, chain mail was more prevalent than lice. Kline was surprised to hear that chain mail existed before email, which goes to show how just a few years demonstrates that the technological boom creates a cultural gap. Before the crappy sCrOlL dOwN aNd MaKe A wIsH!!!!!!

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fOrWaRd ThIs To TeN fRiEnDs FoR yOuR wIsH tO cOmE tRuE!!!!!

Sorry, flashbacks. Before those, there were letters that threatened years of bad luck and that your mom would die and that you would have bad hair days and your hair might even turn green. The only way to prevent this misfortune was to send the letter on to seven friends. The problem with children in elementary school is that they all share the same set of friends, thus the same darned letter is circulated between the same people.

When you were under the age of ten, bad luck was not something to be contended with, so regardless of how skeptical you were, you dutifully sent it on to your friends. Though I can't remember in earlier years whether I ever perpetuated the chain by sending it on, I do remember in fifth grade, this same damn chain letter was reappearing amongst my peers and I for weeks straight. After determining that these letters would not go away unless we got them out of town, I developed a plan: I would allow everyone to give all of the letters they needed to send out and I would send them to my numerous out-of-state friends and cousins in order to move it out of our friendship circle. That was a lie -- I did not have numerous out-of-state friends and cousins; instead, I threw out every single letter. I could never admit this fact, as it would spook people out and they would consider me the dumbest person around for tempting fate. But screw it, I was tired of it being the only topic of conversation and wanted it dead. I never understood why if you had a hypothetical time bomb of misfortune, you'd pass it off to your best friends in order to save yourself. Talk about being a rotten friend!

So yeah, if you were one of the friends who I took all of your chain letters from fifteen years ago and you still know me well enough to be reading this blog (say hello if that's the case, because I'm having trouble guessing who that'd be), please know that while I regret deceiving you, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I did it for you! If we didn't outsource those things to the dump, it'd have lasted longer than the Pog craze. I was willing to risk all those cumulative years of bad luck for the sake of some temporary sanity. Besides, it's not as if I believe in that kind of superstitious stuff. Why, I've never had a bad hair day in my life.