I assume everybody knows someone like this. A Forwarder. Someone who enjoys the novelty of email and thinks nothing of filling your inbox with everything of moderate to high interest that may have passed through their inbox.

So they forward it on to you. And everyone else in their address book.

For us, it was my sister. Every joke, every virus warning, and worst of all, every inspirational story. She's much better now, but for a while there it was several of these things a day. And I got so I would delete them unread, and hope she didn't include any familial message inside.

She got so that she would request notification of when we had opened them. Especially the religious ones.

I saved one, unopened.

And opened it one year later. Allowing the notification to be sent.

I guess that was when she slowed down to a more reasonable pace. I actually enjoy most of hers, now.

But now we have another forwarder. A gal from one of the community groups the wife is involved in. Several forwards a day. Right now the subject lines in our inbox include:

Fw: S L O W

Power to the People

Fw: SMILE

Fw: An act of charity

Fw: To my friends, I really liked this >

Fw: Wonderful W*oming

Haven't opened the top ones, but couldn't resist the bottom one. Drafted one of my own that I was going to use here some time, but some of theirs were better. Like you know you're in W*oming because:

- You've seen all the biggest bands ten years after they were popular.

- "Down south" means Colorado.

- You measure distance in hours.

- You switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day.

- You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.

- You carry jumper cables in your car.

- You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.

- The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires 6 pages for High School sports.

- You think that deer season is a national holiday.

- You never knew there was a taxi service in your town.

Heh. Addictive little suckers, aren't they? Here I was deriding this behavior, and now I'm forwarding that one on to you. There's a moral there somewhere, but I missed it.

But don't worry, someone will forward it on soon.