Breaking the Chain

Elayne's post has brought back some rather unpleasant memories...

Back in elementary school, a "friend" of mine accused me of giving her a chain letter, which was all the rage at the time. Like most chain letters, it had dire warnings about how if you break the chain your hair will fall out, you'll lose all your money, and etc, etc, illustrated with examples like Mr. Henry Doofus of Nowhere OK broke the chain and his marriage fell apart. Mrs. June Jittery of Abysmal ND broke the chain and lost her job and her husband in one week. In other words, the usual nonsense.

The thing is, I didn't like chain letters, had never gotten one personally, and would not have passed it on if I did. The accusation stung. I told her it wasn't me, but she refused to believe it. I looked at the letter. It was handwritten, and not even in my handwriting. I pointed that out. She still insisted that I had sent the note. So I took the note up to the teacher and asked, "Do you think this is my handwriting?"

To my utter shock and horror, the teacher said that, yes, it looked like my writing. Even though it didn't bear the slightest resemblance to my writing. In my eyes, it looked completely different. I was dumbstruck. My faith in teachers vanished completely in an instant. I hadn't written that note, and the teacher was wrong about the handwriting. And worse, the teacher decided to punish me for passing along a chain letter. Which I hadn't done.

Flash forward a few months. A different classmate passed me a note on the playground. I opened it and was angry to see a chain letter. I held it up so my classmate could see what I was doing, then I tore it to shreds in front of her. She gasped, clearly thinking I was going to lose my job or my husband or something. But I never got another chain letter during that particular era of stupidity.

And to this day I hate the things with an unrivaled passion. Whether through e-mail or on paper, I detest chain letters.