Junk Mail
Everyone knows what it is. It is as American as baseball, mom and apple pie. It is also as aggravating as a telephone call from a telemarketer. Well, almost. Even when you check your email, you often have to wade through one, two and often three spam mails. If you ever see someone standing beside his mailbox cursing, it is probably either due to all the junk mail interweaved throughout his regular mail or there is a letter there from the IRS. I often thought of storing my garbage cans next to the mailbox because I felt like I was getting a hernia from carrying all that extra weight from the mailbox to the house.
Remember several years ago when junk mailers discovered that people were throwing their junk mail away without opening any of the envelopes? They decided to begin disguising their junk mail by using brown envelopes and writing something official looking on the outside. This would deceive the recipient into believing that it was from a governmental office and must be opened. Did you ever get fooled into opening one of these Trojan horses and thinking, “I am so glad that they did this or otherwise I might have missed out on this opportunity to buy into a time share!” No! And neither did I.
Finally, I had had enough. One day while stuffing one more 50 gal trash bag full of brown envelopes into my 30 gal garbage can, I made a life changing decision. I would never again be duped into opening another brown envelope! I had had it! I was nobody’s fool (at least not any more).
I didn’t have to wait long. The following day I pushed my wheelbarrow to the mailbox and there it was. Peeking out from between my personal letter from Ed McMahon and my monthly CD,s from Columbia House was the culprit. Brown, legal size, with the distinct return address from somewhere official sounding, it rested like a chameleon on the wall. I was ready!
I was so angry that I decided it didn’t deserve to go into the wheelbarrow with the rest of the day’s offenders. This one was going to be thrown to the wind. Let someone else discover it laying on the sidewalk somewhere covered with the shoeprints of others who disdained it for what it really was. I threw it on the ground with all the pent up frustration and anger that had accumulated with every deceptive brown envelope I had opened in the past. “Take that, Ed McMahon!” I shouted with the memories of all the disappointments and rejections I had suffered in the past. I didn’t even read Reader’s Digest!
As I walked away, pushing my wheelbarrow full of magazines I didn’t order and sales flyers from stores I never shopped at, a thought came to me with the intensity of The Passion. Two words came to me faster than a speeding bullet, REFUND CHECK! It might be for real! It really could be that refund check that I had been waiting for.
NO! NO! NO! I refuse to be abused again. I am nobody’s fool. I will no longer be deceived. I am free. I will never again bow down to the wiles of the telemarketer, the advertiser nor the spammer. Never again will I have to stand up and say, “I am Paul Whitley and I am telemarketer patsy!” I was so angry that I turned on my heel and returned to stomp on that brown envelope one more time to show my disgust, to reveal my resolve, to prove once and for all that I would not be taken advantage of ever again.
As I lifted my size 10 to forever settle the issue, I saw the victim staring lifelessly up at me. It looked like a refund check. It was the same color. That cardboard card peeking out of the address window looked official. What if I was being too hasty? What if it really was the refund check I had been waiting for? Could it be for real? How would I ever know for sure?
Looking around me to make sure that no one was looking, I hesitantly picked up the envelope as if it were a rattlesnake. It was the moment of truth. Was I really as strong as I thought I was? Was I a man or a mouse? If this was not the refund check that I had been waiting on, would this be so devastating that my wife would have to call the men in the white coats? It didn’t matter. I had to know!
Like a drunk returning to the bottle, with shaking hands I tore into the envelope! There in my hands lay a check from the IRS for over $1000! I began to shake uncontrollably like a man who has just escaped a head on collision with an eighteen wheeler. To think that I almost threw away a check for over $1000! My knees went weak. My strength left me. It was almost more than I could bear. I would never be able to look at a brown envelope the same again.
Now may I interject a thought here. The world hands us junk philosophies, theories, and deceptive ideologies every day much like the junk mail in our mailboxes. Most people have been deceived at least once in their life and now they have become hardened to any attempt anyone makes to tell them about the truth. Perhaps you are one of these people. You have decided not to listen to another person trying to tell you about a God who loves you and who wants to give you the love you have always desired. But like the story above, how can you be sure that you are not rejecting the one truth that you have been looking for?
I will conclude with a saying that my father-in-law was very fond of, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” There is a treasure waiting for you. Don’t throw it away.
Remember several years ago when junk mailers discovered that people were throwing their junk mail away without opening any of the envelopes? They decided to begin disguising their junk mail by using brown envelopes and writing something official looking on the outside. This would deceive the recipient into believing that it was from a governmental office and must be opened. Did you ever get fooled into opening one of these Trojan horses and thinking, “I am so glad that they did this or otherwise I might have missed out on this opportunity to buy into a time share!” No! And neither did I.
Finally, I had had enough. One day while stuffing one more 50 gal trash bag full of brown envelopes into my 30 gal garbage can, I made a life changing decision. I would never again be duped into opening another brown envelope! I had had it! I was nobody’s fool (at least not any more).
I didn’t have to wait long. The following day I pushed my wheelbarrow to the mailbox and there it was. Peeking out from between my personal letter from Ed McMahon and my monthly CD,s from Columbia House was the culprit. Brown, legal size, with the distinct return address from somewhere official sounding, it rested like a chameleon on the wall. I was ready!
I was so angry that I decided it didn’t deserve to go into the wheelbarrow with the rest of the day’s offenders. This one was going to be thrown to the wind. Let someone else discover it laying on the sidewalk somewhere covered with the shoeprints of others who disdained it for what it really was. I threw it on the ground with all the pent up frustration and anger that had accumulated with every deceptive brown envelope I had opened in the past. “Take that, Ed McMahon!” I shouted with the memories of all the disappointments and rejections I had suffered in the past. I didn’t even read Reader’s Digest!
As I walked away, pushing my wheelbarrow full of magazines I didn’t order and sales flyers from stores I never shopped at, a thought came to me with the intensity of The Passion. Two words came to me faster than a speeding bullet, REFUND CHECK! It might be for real! It really could be that refund check that I had been waiting for.
NO! NO! NO! I refuse to be abused again. I am nobody’s fool. I will no longer be deceived. I am free. I will never again bow down to the wiles of the telemarketer, the advertiser nor the spammer. Never again will I have to stand up and say, “I am Paul Whitley and I am telemarketer patsy!” I was so angry that I turned on my heel and returned to stomp on that brown envelope one more time to show my disgust, to reveal my resolve, to prove once and for all that I would not be taken advantage of ever again.
As I lifted my size 10 to forever settle the issue, I saw the victim staring lifelessly up at me. It looked like a refund check. It was the same color. That cardboard card peeking out of the address window looked official. What if I was being too hasty? What if it really was the refund check I had been waiting for? Could it be for real? How would I ever know for sure?
Looking around me to make sure that no one was looking, I hesitantly picked up the envelope as if it were a rattlesnake. It was the moment of truth. Was I really as strong as I thought I was? Was I a man or a mouse? If this was not the refund check that I had been waiting on, would this be so devastating that my wife would have to call the men in the white coats? It didn’t matter. I had to know!
Like a drunk returning to the bottle, with shaking hands I tore into the envelope! There in my hands lay a check from the IRS for over $1000! I began to shake uncontrollably like a man who has just escaped a head on collision with an eighteen wheeler. To think that I almost threw away a check for over $1000! My knees went weak. My strength left me. It was almost more than I could bear. I would never be able to look at a brown envelope the same again.
Now may I interject a thought here. The world hands us junk philosophies, theories, and deceptive ideologies every day much like the junk mail in our mailboxes. Most people have been deceived at least once in their life and now they have become hardened to any attempt anyone makes to tell them about the truth. Perhaps you are one of these people. You have decided not to listen to another person trying to tell you about a God who loves you and who wants to give you the love you have always desired. But like the story above, how can you be sure that you are not rejecting the one truth that you have been looking for?
I will conclude with a saying that my father-in-law was very fond of, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” There is a treasure waiting for you. Don’t throw it away.
posted by GrandFather at 1:26 PM
1 Comments:
ROTFL!
Thanks for the link - you hit the junk mail nail on its proverbial head.
Spam, pop-ups, spyware, junk mail, and - almost the worst - telemarketers. They'll hit us anywhere they can. I would really like to see some statistics as to whether this form of "assault advertising" ever works. I mean, it must, or why would they do it? But I cannot, as you pointed out so hilariously, fathom how.
Very funny stuff - glad to have found your blog.
Happy blogging!
Justine
Post a Comment
<< Home