I get a couple messages by e-mail every day.
Although the subjects vary, at the end they all will say,
“Pass it on, pass it on to a neighbor, friend, or foe.
Don’t delay, send a copy out to everyone you know.”
Each one will claim, in some way, that the world will be made better
If you can be persuaded to pass on some new chain letter.
Some are jokes or cartoons or light thoughts of inspiration;
Others warn of viruses now spreading through the nation.
Some even use religion to invoke a sense of shame
Should you decline to pass it on, but still, it’s all a game.
And I’ve been burned a couple times by news of some new virus
That turned out just to be a hoax. Such news should not inspire us
To pass on information if we don’t know that it’s true,
So I have thought it over. Here’s what I am going to do.
It’s gotten to the point where I just simply don’t have time
To separate the good ones from the bad ones, so now I’m
Going to pass on passing on each message that I get,
Even the ones that claim to carry news of some new threat.
If something like that is for real, they don’t need me to send
The news to everybody. I don’t have the time to spend.
I think most everybody is receiving too much mail
Sent to them unsolicited, and much of it is stale
From having been sent ‘round the world a dozen times or more:
The jokes and urban legends that they all have heard before.
And it would be far better if I don’t add to the pile,
For anything I send might not get read for quite a while.

8/03