Got Spam?

Even a specialist in shallow perception could get fed up with spam. For no other type of reading have I hired someone else to serve as a bouncer. Okay, Mr. Microsoft Junk Mail isn’t exactly human but then maybe most of the spam senders aren’t either.

Now that I have a blog of my own, I would like to include the occasional spam story (both mine and yours, so remember your standing invitation to comment and/or to Guest Post). My college training as an English Major doesn’t get as much use as it once did, back when I wrote papers on those big sellers of sexual performance drugs, Herbert Spenser, John Milton, and Virginia Woolf.

So today I will deconstruct the most interesting spam to reach me in a good long while. And I do mean long:

Have you ever longed for a costly Watch? 

No, I have never longed for a costly material possession of any kind. Partly, it is my lifestyle as a privileged, middle-class American. Never have I been hungry enough to long, say, for a Happy Meal.

By disposition, I’m not a stuff-longer anyway, and neither (thank God) is my husband. For example, buying a car, when absolutely necessary, we will “long” for whatever Consumer Reports tells us would be a good deal.

So when that spam streaked past my filter, informing me about the allure of a “costly Watch,” I thought it was hilarious. Several copies were forwarded to my closest friends. Click onto forward for a few emails, then subject forgotten, right?

Wrong, if you click forward on the cosmic time computer by a couple of weeks. Rose goes off to a Gem and Jewelry Show in

What did we want? I was in the market for a chain, maybe a lapis necklace. Linda just wanted “something fun,” and with her only children, twins, leaving for college, she was entitled. Linda and I went off to our hunt-and-gathering.

Who knew that we would eventually shop for watches? Years ago, I found a reliable Seiko. Amazingly, I have managed to not lose it. Nor have I strained its capabilities by trying to wear it on both wrists at once. That would be good enough for me, normally.

Except at this expo, I bumped into my buddy Pat. She raved about—of all things—the cute watches for sale. One bustling and acquisitive hour later, I stood before a booth with absolutely gorgeous watches. Both Linda and I started to drool through our eyes. Prices were reasonable, the selection extraordinary.

Linda bought five (most for gifts), and I found two cute ones for me-me-me.

The implications didn’t hit me until the next day, hand-deleting more spam that got away from Mr. Microsoft Junk Mail. Imagine, not one but two “costly” watches! Could I be more persuadable than I knew? Or had I just cleared out one unexpected longing, and done it cheap?