It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [70]
“You’d better not!” my mother warned. “It’s ether, Laurie! It says it in the email! It’s not perfume!”
“I’m putting my hair in a ponytail!” I threatened.
“Go ahead and be an idiot!” my mother countered. “It’s like putting a handle on your head. Try to grab a pitcher without a handle. It’s almost impossible!”
“I have to go now, Mom!” I said, my voice rising. “I hear a crying baby on my porch and I’m afraid it’s going to crawl into traffic! Bye! Bye! If you hear me scream, please push *LIES!”
I didn’t hear from my mom for a while after that, which was probably for the best, especially since I was still making a point of not carrying an umbrella until after 9:30 a.m. But then one day it came, a message too important to ignore, an email too frightening to deny. Doing what all good mothers do; trying to ensure my survivability.
“FWD: FWD: FWD: verry important to know!”
And there, unfolding before me in red 70-point Helvetica:
A few days ago, a person was recharging his mobile phone at home. Just at that time a call came in and he answered it with the charger still connected to the outlet.
After a few seconds electricity flowed into the cell phone unrestrained and the young man was thrown to the floor with a heavy thud. As you can see, the phone actually exploded. [Inserted here is a photo of a charred, dirty mattress that has clearly been on fire.]
His parents rushed to the room only to find him unconscious, with a weak heartbeat and burnt fingers.
He was rushed to the nearby hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
[Inserted here is a photo of the dead man’s hand, cooked, with fingers swollen to the size of Ball Park franks. They plump when you cook them.]
Cell phones are a very useful modern invention.
However, we must be aware that it can also be an instrument of death.
Never use the cell phone while it is hooked to the electrical outlet! If you are charging the cell phone and a call comes in, unplug it from the charger and outlet.
FORWARD THIS TO THE PEOPLE THAT MATTER IN YOUR LIFE!!!
Clearly, in the world of FWD, this was a hallmark moment. Never before had my mother sent an email that was illustrated with photos featuring the hands of the corpse. I mean, really, it was almost proof. For a moment I was lost in the excitement of the bloated, waxy sausage fingers, and I thought, I can’t believe I’ve answered an instrument of death when it was being charged and I lived! I am still alive!!
And then, as if there was a cherry on this cake, I spotted something incredible in the very last line: “Verified by snopes.com!,” followed by a link.
Wow. I thought, I am impressed. Finally, my mother has sent me a true Forecast of World Destruction. I couldn’t believe it. The fear was real. It was justified! In fact, I had just gotten up to unplug my instrument of death when I sat back down and decided to click the link.
And, to be honest, much to my dismay, the page that came up was indeed to snopes.com but was a blank page that said only, “You wanted what?”
A dead link. No such page.
I took a deep breath and reached for the phone, since I was positive my mother was about to embark on a door-to-door mission to inform her neighbors of the catastrophe, armed with the “dead hands” photo as evidence. To her, sending the email with photographic evidence that the fear was real was not only an accomplishment, but a message to me that every time she had sent out another FWD, she really was helping to stop someone from dialing a truly evil area code or being roasted by a cellphone charger or keeping a serial killer who was terrified of umbrellas from impersonating an officer.
I dialed the right area code for her phone number (the temptation to dial 809 still soooo great) and then stopped.
I looked at the last line of the email again.
“FORWARD THIS TO THE PEOPLE THAT MATTER IN YOUR LIFE!!!”
I thought for a minute.
And with that, I hung up the phone.
The Burn Test
The first time I walked into the kitchen of the house I would eventually buy, the current owner saw my eyes immediately catch fire when they