First Impressions

For those of you who have never been in my parents' house, they have an old organ in the dining room. My father bought it in the first couple of years of their marriage, presumably because he had visions of his children learning to play and forming a family band which, back in the early 70s, required one person on the organ. As you probably guessed, all four of his children failed this vision, as none of us know how to play the organ (as of right now the next generation doesn't look musically inclined either). So, last year my father finally gave up his dream and decided it was time for the organ to stop taking up space. However, because it is impossible to simply throw anything away anymore and because the organ still works, my parents preferred to donate it to a local music program. Well, after a year of trying to find a school or church who would want/need an organ and failing miserably, they gave up that fight as well and are now willing to give it away to anyone willing carry it out the door. Because I am the resident Craig's List expert in my family, the task fell to me. I posted a small ad in the 'free stuff' section and within an hour I was reminded of a couple key details about the internet: 1) free stuff brings people out of the woodwork and 2) not everyone should be allowed to have internet access.

I stopped reading the comments under articles a long time ago. It wasn't even the blatant racism or terrible grammar which finally did me in (though they did not help). No, the people who finally broke my spirit were the ones with nothing to add to a conversation, but who still took the time to fill out a comment. I simply could no longer tolerate their massive egos which told them everyone was dying to know what they thought about an issue. Most of the time their contributions would be something along the lines of, "Who cares about this story?" Well, obviously you care otherwise you wouldn't have clicked on the link or taken the time to fill out a comment after you read the whole thing, all the way through to the end. In fact, I would contend those people care more than most, because the people who truly didn't care barely made it past the headline. But, even worse than those people were the ones who decided this was going to be their time to show the world how clever they are because, as you may have guessed, they were not clever at all. The problem with not reading internet comments is that after a while you forget these idiots exist. But then you post something to Craig's List and suddenly not only are these people back in your lives, they are delivered directly to your inbox.

The first email came way too quickly and was as hackneyed as you could imagine: "Oh, you're giving away an organ? Has anyone claimed your kidneys yet?" Now, as you would expect I have cleaned up the grammar and the original message was ALL IN CAPS for added comedy, but I think I don't think the way I've posted it here takes away from the annoyance I immediately had for this person. I imagine he sits at home and does nothing but send terrible puns back to every Craig's List ad he sees, as if that is any way to spend your life. I'm just curious as to what he hoped to accomplish with this. Was he taking the chance I was an executive producer and looking to find the next great comedy star? Because if that is his ultimate dream he is taking a really curious route to get there. The second one was not far behind and while I'm not going to re-post it verbatim, just know it made the oh-so-classy move of using the word 'organ' to make a masturbation joke. With such people skills, I'm sure this guy is quite a hit with the ladies. I didn't respond to either, mostly because I didn't want to give them the satisfaction. Besides, I'm sure my comebacks, which would naturally be dripping with sarcasm, would have gone right over their heads. Either that or I would have gone way too far the other way and implied they were related to their wives before they ever got married. Unlike them, I choose not to anonymously insult complete strangers.

Look, I know this is what I get for posting on a free message board. People are much more inclined to be idiots if it isn't going to cost them any money. Still, I was surprised by these emails because I simply can't wrap my brain around why you would be in such a hurry to show a complete stranger what an idiot you are. Furthermore, if you have the kind of existence where you can not only search the internet for things you do not want but also waste your free time sending emails which are immediately going to be deleted perhaps it is time to take a step back and reexamine a few of the decisions you have made in your life. But the main thing I took from this is that maybe it's not so great that it is easy for random strangers to be able to interact with one another. After all, there is a reason I have kept my stable of close friends to a very low number for all these years - I'm very picky about who I really like. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, either. There is no law which states everyone on Earth has to be best friends. Besides, if you are looking to make new friends, randomly emailing people one at a time isn't the way to do it. And if you are looking for an audience to test our your joke material on, you probably wan to start by going to an open mike night. But before that my biggest suggestion would be to get some new material, because the crop of stuff I got was pretty weak.