The Book of Spam

Today's post will start with a disclaimer, lest anyone think I am in any way maligning the bible or religion. I am not. The bible is a wonderful book. At least I am told that it is. Being Catholic, we don't actually read the bible...ever. No, the target of today's post is my old nemesis, junk e-mail.

I received another of these e-gems the other day from a friend who is apparently unfamiliar with my rather rigid stance on when and under what circumstances email chain letters will be graciously accepted by me. Though this email did not meet said conditions, I broke from my own policy and read it anyway.

Without reprinting the whole thing, the original author's gist is the query, "What if we treated our bible like our cell phone?" You know, carry it around all the time, check it frequently, and so on. My interest was piqued so I, too, began to wonder what it would be like if we treated the bible like our cell phones. And what I discovered was the email's author has clearly never met my relatives or friends or he/she would never have used such a terrible metaphor.

Let's just see what would happen if me and the people I know treated our bibles like our cell phones. For starters, the work-issued "bible" would have been dropped in the toilet when the belt clip holder came loose right in mid-twist-to-flush-while-pulling-up-pants motion. It would then have been taken apart and dried with a hair dryer. To the email author's point, there was a great deal of prayer involved because the "bible" had been assigned to a brand new employee and the bestower of said "bible" was a dour and nasty woman who could make life most difficult even for senior employees, let alone a new hire.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, the "bible" would also be dropped into the deep end of a backyard swimming pool. Right in mid-sentence. Plop. It would then spend the next 12 hours inside an oven set to "warm" in the hopes that upon drying it would once again be usable. It would also take a quick but devastating dip in the shallow end of a rental home swimming pool in Kill Devil Hills inside the pocket of a pair of shorts, be doused beyond any use by a car speeding through a puddle during taping of a news stand-up, and be left outside during an overnight monsoon.

The "bible" would be left on the bumper of an SUV, on the roof of a van, and on the trunk of a car while each of the vehicles drove away into the night. It would slip from a pocket, fall onto the running board of a car, fall OUT of the car when the door opened, land in a puddle, and get run over by at least two vehicles before being discovered as missing. It would then take two days for someone to locate it, two more days for them to box it up and mail it to the owner, and two minutes for the owner to accept that this particular "bible" has been rendered damaged beyond all repair.

The "bible" would be left on a plane, in a cab, and in at least half a dozen meetings. It would be dropped, kicked, used as a teething toy for a drooly baby, used as a chew toy by a dog, stepped on, sat on, spilled on, cursed for losing its signal, cursed for finding its signal, ignored, set to "quiet", and generally be abused in a thousand new and unique ways every day. Frankly, I think God might be a little offended if we treated our bible like we treat our cell phones.

So what, exactly, is the moral of this story? Well, it is twofold. First, always take a moment to think your metaphors through, especially if you think they are clever enough to be worth sending to everyone you have ever met. Second, stop forwarding this crap to me.