#804 X-Spam Junkie

Not long ago I installed spam filters on both my home and work computers.
And now I’m lonely.
I didn’t realize how much of my email was spam until it disappeared. I’d gotten so used to filtering through ad after ad for male enhancement; plea after plea to invest in penny stocks; entreaty after entreaty to lose weight with miracle herbs.
It had just become part of my routine.
They say that familiarity breeds contempt but the opposite is also true—repetition builds intimacy.
These spam people were like the annoying crows in the parking lot everyday at work. You don’t know them really. You don’t want to know them. But you get used to having them there. If they were gone, you’d miss them. They are a part of the big thing you call your life.
It’s like that guy on the corner bench in Tumwater. Everybody I talk to that drives on Capitol Way knows him. He used to be over by Fred Meyer. We ignore him, for the most part. He appears to be a bum, and he also appears to be a little crazy—talking to his imaginary friends.
But in a way he talks to us. Because if he was gone we’d all have a little empty place in our lives.
So it is with my spam. I understand now why old people seem to go through every piece of junkmail. And they seem to do it with far more reverence than younger people on the go.
Older folks treat each circular as actual correspondence with another human being. And with so many of their friends dead and gone, those occasional offers from Ed McMahon take on the weight of companionship.
Yes companionship. Junk mail fills a hole in their lives. They get addicted to it. Junkmail junkies. Because if it wasn’t for junkmail, they wouldn’t get no mail at all. Is it any wonder they send their scarce nickels and dimes to junkmail purveyors who ask them for help for sometimes bogus causes?
You help your friends, right?
America, ya gotta love it.