Please, think about this for a moment or twenty.
You're having a great day at work or getting ready to go on vacation or you're feeling better than you have in a long time, maybe something exciting and wonderful has happened in your life.
So, you go on the net, and you find you've received an email or social network wall or blog comment post from a friend.
Only it isn't truly something from them, not something they actually wrote to you.
It could be the title of the story, which might make you wonder what the heck your friend is on about. Or it could simply be an exclamation of "This is SOOOO BEAUTIFUL!" or something to that effect.
So, if you get curious, you open it and read.
And how do you feel after reading it?
If you're not wise to memes, you probably feel like crying, and somehow you're definitely not as happy as you were before you opened your email or checked out your FB wall etc.! "Gee, thanks, pal!"
Or, you could be having a blah day, or even a depressing day, and this story is somehow going to make it better?
NOT!
You feel even worse than you did before reading the post.
Since when is it cool to try to make friends cry?
It's one thing if you are at a movie and you and a friend cry because it's an emotional scene. Even if you knew that scene was coming, and you and your friend like the same types of movies. That's just fine, it's a healthy outlet and keeping in touch with your emotions, and movies aren't using them against you in a spamming scheme.
That's the difference between real entertainment and memes. The former is meant to entertain, and provoke thought in some cases. The latter is manipulative head-gaming.
Sending this sad junk about fictional dying kids that are now writing their grieving and equally fictional parents notes from Heaven, and with the goal of the thing to be shared and shared and re-shared and re-shared around the net and back again, this glurge is using your emotions, you are being seriously played! Do not give in.
Having said that, we do need to expose and thrash it to hopefully give anyone who comes across the drubbing, pause for thought, so they might hopefully be less likely to re-share the next sad sap to cross their computer screens.
This meme story sometimes titled "Letter From Heaven" or "Note From Heaven" or "Jimmy's Letter/Note From Heaven" is an insidious, horrible glurge chain letter. It is absolutely rancid!
TruthOrFiction.com has a summary followed by the story in its utterly nauseating entirety. Read at your own risk!
I all out mangled it, but nearly put myself out of commission during the process. I did it because TruthOr Fiction, great site that it is, couldn't go quite far enough or strong enough in discouraging the spread of this gagworthy tripe.
To summarize:
this fictional little kid named Jimmy didn't survive his cancer surgery, so he died and left his fictional mother Sally an invisible ink letter from Heaven telling her he was all happy happy joy joy now and wants her to be as well, he even suggests she adopt a little girl and give her dolls because she wouldn't like boys toys. Oh, and of course, little Jimmy's wishing doesn't stop there. He also wants you too, to be tear-jerked enough so you will weep for Jimmy and Sally and you'll re-share his sad story about dying and then writing about that big beautiful toybox in the sky!
BLECH! Oh, for the love of friendship, give me a barfing break!
First, the whole cancer thing.
Nobody seems to be able to resist spreading around any meme that mentions cancer. "Raising awareness" although honestly, many of us are all awarenessed out. Supposedly touching stories, some true, a good deal of them fiction or outdated or outright lies about people, whatever.
No matter who the characters are, what the direction the plot takes, if there is any, it all boils down to one thing in these memes, cancer.
Some of us are just fed up to here with getting beaten over the cyber head and heart with the great big viral cancer stick.
Next, do you really want to make your friends cry needlessly over this insipid, corny, over-saccharined, sac-religious glurge? Do you want to annoy them by sending them this terrible and unnecessary, badly-written downer?
🙎Meme: Sally jumped up as soon as she saw the surgeon come out of the operating room.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, yay, another sad sack story...
🙎Meme: She said: How is my little boy? Is he going to be all right? When can I see him?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yeah, um, I just know what's gonna happen next, lemme guess, he's either about to die or has already...
🙎Meme: The surgeon said, "I'm sorry."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I knew it.
🙎Meme: "We did all we could, but your boy didn't make it."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Told ya. So, could someone explain to me why on earth friends keep sending around this depressing schlock? Maybe they got moved to tears by it, but it's really inconsiderate to try to pass this unnecessary downer on to others.
🙎Meme: Sally said, "Why do little children get cancer? Doesn't God care any more? Where were you, God, when my son needed you?"
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Um, yeah, look, it's pretty understandable to go through big angst in a situation like that. I've been there, only it wasn't my kid, since I never had kids, it was a best friend, a Christian no less. So, hang on, lemme look this up, okay? It might answer your question at least somewhat if you want to go questioning, no, make that blaming God for whatever crap that happens.
And here it is.
Matthew 5:45
that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
I think that basically means God doesn't play favorites.
As to why this situation, why cancer and other horrible things exist at all, well, Sally, you need only look back at the story of the "original sin" in Genesis to get the answer to that, and that the devil had become evil in the first place. If he hadn't been evil, he wouldn't have tempted Eve and Adam into doing things against God's mandates and then there wouldn't have been such things as cancer and all that guck the evil ball would not have got rolling at all.
But - it has.
So, don't blame God for your kid's sickness and death, Sally. It's unfair, but it isn't his fault, it isn't your fault, it isn't my fault, and as far as this whole story goes, the one at fault is whoever originated this awful chain letter in the first place and put you in this depressing role!
🙎Meme: The surgeon asked, "Would you like some time alone with your son? One of the nurses will be out in a few minutes, before he's transported to the university."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Um okay, *twitch* you just told this grieving mother that her dead son would go to the university to be studied? Why even ask her at all if she wants time alone with him, why not just, you know, quietly leave the room and let her start to grieve in private, or make sure someone was on hand to comfort her if she requires it?
🙎Meme: Sally asked the nurse to stay with her while she said good-bye to her son.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Twitch* Yeah, this is one of the reasons I wouldn't make a good nurse, or police officer or anyone who had to hang around, watching other people's emotional agony, and it's also the reason friends should not send their friends this stuff. Seriously, what possible cheer, what possible good does this pathetic story do anyone? Especially if they were having a great day, and then suddenly PUNCH-POW! Into their inbox barges this morbid drip!
🙎Meme: She ran her fingers lovingly through his thick red curly hair.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: TMI. Look, I really don't need or want you describing to me in every lurid detail the whole grieving process, especially not this one - just - eww. It sure as heck won't entice me to forward this chain by the way.
🙎Meme: "Would you like a lock of his hair? the nurse asked.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Twitch* This glurge is truly cruel and unusual punishment for the inbox, so let's get this straight, okay? The dead kid's Sally's son. The nurse shouldn't even be feeling like she has to ask Sally if she wants a bit of his hair, as if she was asking a little kid if he wants a piece of candy! If Sally wants it, she could very easily pluck a strand, so please, move on already!
🙎Meme: Sally nodded yes.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And it plods along slower than a snail's pace... I guess I can sort of understand someone writing a story like this as a means of self-therapy to deal with their own grief. That would be completely understandable, I've done that myself. But even then, I didn't get this morbid.
🙎Meme: The nurse cut a lock of the boys hair, put it in a plastic bag and handed it to Sally.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I just threw up a little in my mouth. I suppose you're going to describe in endless detail the way the lock of hair curled, twisted and twirled as Sally pocketed or pursed it, too... Meme-mangling can be wonderfully self-theraputic and I often end up making myself laugh. But I don't think I'll be laughing much by the time I'm through with this one, and there is good reason I put it off for so long. However, it had to be done eventually.
🙎Meme: The mother said, It was Jimmy's idea to donate his body to the university for study. He said it might help somebody else."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Gah! You could've saved me at least one twitchy moment and outlined that at the very beginning of this dang story when mentioned he was getting carted away to the uni instead of a funeral home, a morgue, whatever!
But oh I think I get it now, you wanted to make sure the nurse as well as all recipients of this chain, heard it from Sally herself, who was expressing the last wishes of her precious little Jimmy, the unbelievably deep-minded, altruistic child who this Sally now is like totally caressing and whom you want me to break down, get on my knees and well up with tears and gush over as well.
Not gonna happen!
🙎Meme: "I said no at first, but Jimmy said, Mom, I wont be using it after I die. Maybe it will help some other little boy spend one more day with his Mom."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Violent hurlage! cough cough cough gag! Choke chokity-choke choke cough!* Aheh - aheh - a-HEH!! *Gasping for air
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!S
I
C
K
E
N
I
N
G
!!!!!!!!
Where's the ROLAIDS? Ah, nevermind, I couldn't even keep them down at this point.
Ahem *chomps soda cracker, downs a little water* Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Like even a sick kid would come up with this unbelievably maudlin, over-the-top, artificially sweetened attempt at introspective philosophizing, puh-leeeeeeeeeze! Sorry, but this just sounds totally contrived, to be a serious emotion-yanker. Still no tears from me, other than the ones that might've come out accidentally along with the regurgitated snack!
🙎Meme: She went on,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And on, and on, AND ON! *Ears and eyes are bleeding, screen and keyboard meltage* This chain is so rancid it causes serious health and technical problems!
🙎Meme: "My Jimmy had a heart of gold.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But of course he did, after all, "your Jimmy" was such a Gary Stu, (male version of a Mary Sue) absolutely a perfect little snowflake in every way, look we get it already. *Rolls eyes and groans in displeasure* I suppose he glitters and sparkles in sunlight, too...
🙎Meme: "Always thinking of someone else. Always wanting to help others if he could.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Redundant, redundant, redundantly contrived, unbelievably slow and repetitive, like I said, we get it already, your Jimmy went around doing nothing but helping people and thinking of ways to help people 24/7/365................................. Why not just make a freaking shrine to your Jimmy while you're at it?
🙎Meme: Sally walked out of Children's mercy Hospital for the last time, after spending most of the last six months there. She put the bag with Jimmy's belongings on the seat beside her in the car.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And the curtain closes to end Act1.
Curtain opens for Act2.
🙎Meme: The drive home was difficult.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Really? No way. DUH!
🙎Meme: It was even harder to enter the empty house.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, duh, like, really? Like OMGZOMGZOMGZ! I thought it would've been totally the easiest thing in the world for her! Gah, stupid!
🙎Meme: She carried Jimmy's belongings, and the plastic bag with the lock of his hair to her sons room.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, like OMG, must never EVER forget about that lock of hair and the bag and everything in it and exactly what she did with it, lest someone not be moved to tears by this sappy gaggage chain letter glurge story!
🙎Meme: She started placing the model cars and other personal things, back in his room exactly where he had always kept them.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Right, because the world absolutely needed to know that Jimmy had model cars and it is absolutely vital that you tell me every single freaking move Sally makes to prove how much she adores her dead kid and what a sweet little innocent - *GAG!*
🙎Meme: She laid down across his bed and, hugging his pillow, cried herself to sleep.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Tearing my own hair out* I'd like to pull a few locks out of the head of whoever had the bright idea to originate this dreadful meme! Still, no tearing up from me. Just gritting teeth and scowling!
🙎Meme: It was around midnight when Sally awoke. Laying beside her on the bed was a folded letter.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So why, since you were so into the endless details of all things sad and morbid, did you leave out the sight of the letter earlier?
🙎Meme: The letter said:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not that I want to know, but you're going to tell me anyway...
Jimmy: Dear Mom,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, so she's got another kid? So where was this other kid the whole time this story was taking place?
Jimmy: I know you're going to miss me; but don't think that I will ever forget you, or stop loving you, just cause I'm not around to say I LOVE YOU. I will always love you, Mom, even more with each day. Someday we will see each other again.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wait, has she got another kid on the verge of committing suicide? Could this horrible downer of a story possibly get any worse?
Jimmy: Until then, if you want to adopt a little boy so you wont be so lonely, that's okay with me. He can have my room, and old stuff to play with.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Twitch* HUH!? She's just lost one kid, do you really think she's just going to zippity-split run out and adopt another kid? I don't think so! *Twitch*
Jimmy: But, if you decide to get a girl instead, she probably wouldn't like the same things us boys do. You'll have to buy her dolls and stuff girls like, ya know.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: HEL-LO! You only figured that out - when? And your "mommy's" been around a lot longer than you, I think she's managed to work *that* out for herself already! Sheesh, mon! And, as a little girl, I did play with cars, though they weren't model cars, but I didn't just stick to dolls either. Just sayin!
Jimmy: Don't be sad thinking about me. This really is a neat place. Grandma and Grandpa met me as soon as I got here and showed me around some, but it will take a long time to see everything.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay, hold up. Grandma and Grandpa are in the picture? - So this isn't another kid suiciding. So where then, is this bunch of Sally's relatives?
Jimmy: The angels are so cool.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, argh, shoulda guessed *huge eye-roll* Sally gots a sweet wittwe wetter all da way fwom heaven - *sniff sniff* how *mock shrill sobbing* totally precious! *Back to scowling expression* What a hokey story! What a load of rotten - AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGH! You SUCK!
Jimmy: I love to watch them fly.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Bleck, how corny!
Jimmy: And, you know what? Jesus doesn't look like any of his pictures. Yet,when I saw Him, I knew it was Him. Jesus himself took me to see GOD!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Throws brick at chain letter originator* Oh, SHUT IT! Don't drag God's name into this!
Jimmy: And guess what, Mom? I got to sit on Gods knee and talk to Him, like I was somebody important.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Hissing through teeth* What a narcissistic little Gary Stu twurp!
Jimmy: That's when I told Him that I wanted to write you a letter, to tell you good-bye and everything. But I already knew that wasn't allowed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 'Not allowed?" Says dealive little Jimmy SuperAltruisticBeyondBelief Narcissistic Arrogant Know-It-All! *Groans in annoyance*
Clue to Jimmy: It's got nothing to do with what's allowed, and everything to do with dimensions, physics, body VS soul, in which the soul lives on after the body dies, so it's, like, not possible to physically send notes from Heaven unless you are God, and Jimmy, you are not!
I never did like stories pretending to know what heaven was like, and this is definitely no acception. I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT! Hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE!
Jimmy: Well, ya know what Mom? God handed me some paper and His own personal pen to write you this letter. I think Gabriel is the name of the angel who is going to drop this letter off to you.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well, ya know what Jimmy? that ain't God's pen, it was just the costly pen from the Nasa pen hoax chain. So don't pin this on the angel Gabriel! He's got nothing to do with you!
I am going to ram the nearest thing within reach through your neck if you don't...SHUT...UP! You have officially become dealive, and you do not want to be a dealive kid and meet me on the warpath!
Jimmy: God said for me to give you the answer to one of the questions you asked Him
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Screaming roar, lunges at Jimmy and sends him flying!*
Jimmy: * Where was He when I needed him?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I already answered that, you twit!
Jimmy: God said He was in the same place with me, as when His son Jesus was on the cross.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay, kid, you are seriously screwed-up delusional. You're now claiming you were with Jesus on the cross and that somehow that's heaven? Go away, you suck!
Jimmy: He was right there, as He always is with all His children.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: As a Christian, that is a basic, the basic belief. No one needs tawdry chain letters with narcissistic sociopathic little kids who pretend to be sick, fake their own deaths, put their moms through heck, and somehow manage to get away and write fake letters from heaven, trying to tell us anything about God!
Jimmy: Oh, by the way, Mom, no one else can see what I've written except you. To everyone else this is just a blank piece of paper.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, that explains why it has been SEEN, and forwarded by so many other people on the net! And eventually archived on TruthOrFiction, as fiction BTW, and trashed here on MTM.! Yeah, remarkably invisible! Care to explain that one, Jimmy?
Since you're such a magician, it makes sense that to the rest of the world, you might seem dead, but you somehow manage to cheat death and now you go around writing smarmy letters to your mom in ink that's only revealed to be invisible after your say-so. You don't just suck, you STINK-SUCK!
Jimmy: Isn't that cool?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Uh, NO! NOT COOL! Manipulative twaddle is what it is!
Jimmy: I have to give God His pen back now. He needs it to write some more names in the Book of Life. Tonight I get to sit at the table with Jesus for supper. I'm, sure the food will be great.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Codswallop!
Jimmy: Oh, I almost forgot
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You forgot to STHU!
Jimmy: to tell you.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That's all you've been doing for the past, gosh, I lost count, this drivel is going on for what seems to be an eternity! Telling, telling, telling! Jimmy, you've basically been telling everybody what to do and when ever since you got spawned via glurge-horific meme and you've been infecting the internet since!
Jimmy: I don't hurt anymore.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *mocking* Awwwww, ain't that just pwecious!
Jimmy: The cancer is all gone.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Funny how that somehow happens when you get to heaven, or in your case, Jimmy, it wasn't really there at all... So you don't hurt any more, are you sure about that? *PUNCH!* Hey wait a minute. If Sally was in the hospital with you for the better part of 6 months, why the surgeon? I mean, if you really were that bad off, wouldn't you have been long past the stage where they could operate? Just askin, yknow...Because your story doesn't jive.
Jimmy: I'm glad because I couldn't stand that pain anymore and God couldn't stand to see me hurt so much, either.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, that's sure to get emotionally vulnerable and sentimental people totally falling into their tissue boxes, sobbing out loud for you! Not me! Cut the manipulative tear-jerking crap!
Jimmy: That's when He sent the Angel of Mercy to come get me. The Angel said I was Special Delivery! How about that?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: How about a special delivery to your fat head, in the form of a pitchfork? *Plonk!* Now shut up!
Jimmy: Signed with Love from: God, Jesus & Me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: LIAR! Blasphemous liar! God wouldn't play such a cruel trick on a grieving mother! Some of humanity would, though! You stink! Go away!
🙎Meme: TRUE STORY
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: WRONG! It's as fake as they get!
And, it's another among zillions of cancer memes!
🙎Meme: Lets see Satan stop this one.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Didn't you realize Satan started it? And I've seen that Satan phrase in other ludicrous manipulative religious hoax chain letters before!
🙎Meme: Take 60-seconds and send this to five other people, within the hour, you will have caused a multitude of believers to pray to God for each other.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: In a word, BULLTOSH!
I've seen that demand about taking 60 seconds to etc and how forwarding a bunch of religious exploitive schlock supposedly will cause multitudes of people to pray, and it's utter hogwash!
This junk about supposedly setting off a multitude of prayers has been seen in other chain letters too, another example of how one forward borrows from another. Forwarders never seem to keep track of this and realize how the same stuff just keeps getting recycled into various chain letters all over again.
Examples where you'll find the multitude thing:
that horrendous Letter From Heaven chain
The 7% Long-handled Spoons glurge chain
And the so-called Financial Blessing Simple Prayer chain
Believe me, Christians do not need patronizing, bogus chain letters telling them to pray...
🙎Meme: Then sit back and feel the Holy Spirit work in your life for doing what you know God loves.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Like debunking lies and hoaxes!
All that junk about "Let's see Satan stop this one" and "if you're not ashamed of Christ, you'll forward this on" and "you'll cause multitudes (who even uses the word 'multitudes any more?) to pray" stuff can be found and is trounced in these memes
I don't care how many toyboxes and model cars in the sky little Jimmy Whats-His-Face has, this was knock-down, drag-out DREADFUL!
Okay, done! Dirty job, but somebody had to do it and since no other Christian appears to have, the task fell on me!
OVER - AND - OUT!! *Sighs and heads to the kitchen for a much needed refreshing drink.*
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