WHO'S OUT THERE?

Today on my email I received this message:

"Please Contact "Moses" at:

"gerald.larnedmike@gmail.com

"Congratulations and Best Wishes. I am delighted to see you are doing well. I just googled your name on a whim today and was rewarded with your progress.

"Love and Respects

"Moses"

It is problematic in the following ways:

1. The person has too many names!

2. I don't remember anyone with ANY of the names! (Though that's not very significant considering the state of my memory and my checkered career across the country.)

3. "Love and Respects" sounds like a non-English speaker.

4. "Moses" is a religious names which has become a signal to watch out.

5. "was rewarded with your progress" also sounds like a non-English speaker.

6. There is no indication of what "Moses" thinks IS progress! Certainly most people would not consider living in a decrepit house in a tiny village on the edge of a Montana reservation with no income except social security and a tiny pension to be much of an achievement, except maybe in terms of endurance. Sounds like shameless flattery to me.

7. Nice that this person is pleased, but what was our connection anyway? Ministry? Dog-catching? Teaching school? Most people making this kind of contact will hark back to some happy time at a conference or some shared experience at a job.

So I deduce that this is a snare and a trap, doesn't pass the reality test, and is part of the increasingly mysterious web of communication opened up by the Internet.

May others profit from my ruminations by keeping their guard up.

Prairie Mary