Some Perils of Electronic Mail

I just found this email in my inbox, which startled me for about 0.1 second.

And then I remembered what I’d read over the years about internet scams, and decided this must fall into that colorful category. Especially since my name wasn’t even “Landolt.”I did notice that the word “dolt” was in there, perhaps put there as an amusement by the perpetrators of the fraud.

Next I mused how handy 850,000.00 dollars could be in these uncertain times, and allowed myself to idly wish that I’d known Manuel Franco better.

But wait. Did I know him? Was he the quiet guy who sat behind me in chemistry class? The one whose chem notebook slipped from his arms one rainy afternoon on the university quad, spreading his notes over the sidewalk, and who I helped recover those precious papers before they were completely soaked and illegible? Wasn’t his name Franco? I think it was. And of course he was grateful at the time for my help, but could he have vowed all those years ago that he would repay me someday for my great kindness? Deciding only now to seek me out, after making his fortune in the world?

I think that was him. I’m sure that Franco was his surname, and did I ever know his first name? I’ll bet it was Manny, my oldest and dearest friend. Where was he now? Perhaps this bequest was coming out of his estate, and he had recently passed on to glory. Some sort of romantic but fatal illness acquired through all those years on his rubber plantations.

Ahhh, Manny, why didn’t we stay in touch? We were so young and so busy with life’s trivia that we didn’t take proper care of our friendship. Then I wondered about his lovely wife, and those beautiful children that he must have had by now. I was heartbroken for them. To lose such a man. And while not exactly in his prime, he should have had another decade or two to spend surrounded by family and friends and the luxuries he had earned.

And so I hit “Reply” and responded to the note. I told them that my name wasn’t “Landolt,” but that it was an obvious misspelling of Flom, and could they please point me toward my $850,000.00 windfall, so that I might claim it and bother them no more?

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Here are some photographs that I dug out of a shoebox of mi hermano, Manuel. It seems only yesterday … where does the time go?

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What would be at the opposite pole from turmoil, something we all have had quite enough of lately, thank you very much. Well, it might be … lullabies. Check out this science report from the Times of New York. Even reading about it made my heart rate slow down and my pupils become smaller.

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