A friend of mine forwarded me a tearjerker of a chain letter about a little girl who goes to school and talks about her daddy who’s in heaven because he died at 9/11. I was thinking it’s a nice thought, so I won’t complain, even if it is a chain letter, until I looked at the end:
If you don’t send it to anyone, it means you’re
in a hurry and that you’ve forgotten your friends.
That’s got to win a prize as the most emotionally extortionate chain letter ever. Many real people died at 9/11; whoever dishonored their memory by writing this tidbit of melodrama should be ashamed.
Well, it wasn’t the original author who made the poem a 9/11 tearjerker. Somebody inserted an extra stanza to that effect. The real author says:
Daddy’s Day was written because of a little girl in my life whose father was not a fireman, but who died unexpectedly. It pains this little girl greatly that someone has taken something very special to her, written because of her, and changed it to suit their own needs. Daddy’s Day wasn’t intended exclusively for the children of firemen, but for all children who have lost a daddy, and especially for one special little girl in my life.
It does help explain why people fall for 419 scams and phishing messages and all the other cons going around. If they’ll fall for such transparent manipulation, they’ll fall for anything.
-jsq