Never Break The Chain

No, it's not the Fleetwood Mac song, and it's not a chain of gold, and nobody yanked my chain. I got one as a gift! You heard me. I got a gift chain in the mail. A chain letter. Jealous?

Normally, I would file it in the circular file, aka the wastebasket, and never think twice. This one has tempted me. Though I will say that it PISSED ME OFF at first. I saw the return address. It was from an old teaching buddy last seen in 1997. We go waaayyy back, to the little town of Steelville, where we had a third stooge as our partner in crime. Imagine my disappointment when I ripped open the envelope and saw THE CHAIN. You can bet that I am going to take that return address and return her a little piece of my mind for not even tucking a Post-It note in there with a short greeting. It's not like the letter would have required another stamp.

Here's the gist of The Chain. You take a book that you have enjoyed recently, and mail it to the address on the back of The Chain. Then you copy the letter and send it to 6 people with the enclosed address labels applied to the back of The Chain. In each letter, you enclose 6 of your own address labels. Theoretically, you can get 36 books. I would be satisfied to get ONE. That would make up the postage for mailing one book and 6 Chains. I might just go along with this one, if I can think of 6 people who won't kill me for sending them The Chain.

When I was a member of questionable standing in Basementia, we swapped books all the time. Some people brought them in and abandoned them in a pile in the teacher workroom, and others foisted them on particular cronies who had the same reading tastes. It was not uncommon for a book to circulate through the building over the school year. That was the process. If you wanted it back, you loaned it to someone and let them know you wanted it back eventually. I only lost one book that way. I think it was the second Dave Pelzer book. Funny thing, the title of it was The Lost Boy. If you were the type who didn't want a book once you read it, you put it in the teetering pile next to the faculty/staff mailboxes. C'mon. You didn't think teachers actually did work in the teacher workroom, did you?

Anyhoo, I'm mentally weighing the pros and cons of sending out The Chain. Aside from it being against the law, and the looming possibility that I will make 6 enemies, I can't really think of any drawbacks.

It's cheaper then a $10 scratch-off ticket.