The Truth About FWD Mails

How many times have we been explicitly annoyed with the constant flow of the much dreaded 'forward mail' in our email inbox? These forward (or more commonly known by their 'FWD' abbreviation) mails have made emailing a pain in the butt with their often uselessness. According to me, the evil FWD mail can be broken down into four main forms:

That's right, kids. there's the Quiz mail, with a link to a website that often requires you to answer useless questions and find out even more useless (and often untrue) things about yourself.

There's the ever popular 'Chain' mail, which threatens you with impossible things like death by an exploding purple cellphone charger or a fatal wound inflicted by the mythical Chupacabra if you do not pass it on. These often require you to count backwards from 100 and then make a wish while spitting in your hand.

Then there's the 'funny pictures' mail, which isn't so bad. It mostly contains pictures of women drivers getting into accidents or someone's baby being cute by peeing in a soup bowl. The novelty wears off when the same pictures are sent to you over and over again by fifty-million different people. That's when you feel happy about all those accidents and you hope that the baby actually drank the soup.

Finally, there's the 'emotional, tear-jerking true story' email containing a totally fake and made-up account of people doing stupid things in the name of love/loyalty/cows.

BUT (yes, there's a but), there is a fifth form of the FWD mail, and that's the one containing valuable information. These forward mails have been a great help to me from time to time, and I shall give you the most recent examples as to why.

- The Day My iPod Stopped Working

It was like the end of the world for me. My iPod had been one of my most prized possessions ever since my parents had gifted it to me on my fifteenth birthday. I had spilled water all over it, and it wasn't switching on or charging. In the midst of my panic, I miraculously remembered an email I had received a couple of months prior to the incident about fixing iPods at home at zero cost. In a hurry, I opened my email, and after a couple of minutes I found what I was looking for. Someone had forwarded me an email about covering the wet iPod in dry rice and leaving it that way for 24 hours. The rice would absorb the water and the iPod would work again. I tried it, and it worked.

i hope the fact that i have a purple ipod nano is understandable through this picture.

- The Day My Grandfather Had A Stroke

We were all eating dinner when he collapsed in his chair. In twenty seconds he regained consciousness but his speech was slurred. Everyone was in a frenzy. A week and a half before it happened, I had read something in my email about certain things a person must do to figure out if another person has had a stroke or not. They were to. a. Ask the person to repeat any sentence after you. b. Ask the person to smile. c. Ask the person to raise their hands. If they are unable to do one or more of these things, they have most probably had a stroke and should be taken to a hospital within an hour. My grandfather was able to raise his hands, but his smile was lopsided and he couldn't coherently repeat what we were asking him to say. Identifying what had happened to him cleared our minds off of the confusion, and we were able to act and react fast to whatever was happening. My grandfather was taken to the hospital super quick, and in a few days he made a full recovery.

- The Day I Burnt My Hand

I blame my own stupidity for getting into that mess in the first place. The kettle was boiling, and like an idiot I put my hand over the steam emitting from the spout to see how hot it was. 

Let me tell you folks, it was SO BLOODY HOT. My hand got burnt. Luckily I had a small packet of flour inside the fridge. I had read in a FWD email that cold flour heals burns instantly and does not leave a single mark or a trace of pain. I applied the cold flour on the place where I had scalded myself, and when I washed it off (I had kept it on for ten minutes) there was absolutely no sign of any burning except a slight pinkish tinge to my skin (which faded within an hour). No blisters or puckering or peeling or any sort of pain at all. It was miraculous. One of my cousins had burnt her finger a bit while handling a hot pan, and her dad had forced her to apply ice to it. I was there at that time, and I told her to put flour on it instead. She settled for applying flour on one half of her finger and ice on the other. The place where the flour was applied had absolutely no marks and it had stopped hurting. The place where she applied ice however, turned into a blister.

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So you see, after these incidents, whenever I receive a FWD email with a promising title (e.g. 'this is good for your health' or 'how to do so-and-so' etc), I never fail to go through it. Such information is great to be read and passed around. It could really help someone in their time of need.

But if someone ever forwards me a picture of a happy pooping cow and expects me to find it funny, I will find them. And then cut them up into a million pieces and then find that happy pooping cow and STUFF THE PIECES IN ITS MOUTH!!!!!!!!

Goodnight.