Sunday Sundae

I’m not a big fan of mass emails, especially those that tell me to forward to 28 of my closest friends within 28 minutes of opening or else a projectile will come through the back of my skull and out my left nostril--or some other tragedy will befall me. On the other hand, doing as told will bring me riches; 28 million dollars will find their way into my bank account. Okay. Whatever. I believe in energy and intention and the power of positive thinking, but that’s a bit beyond the pale. Still, every once in a while I get one that I bother to read, and because I’ve been on email for over a decade now, some things I find myself reading for the second or third time. 

Recently I got one about Erma Bombeck’s thoughts at the end of her life, what she wished she had done more and what she wished she hadn’t worried about. I checked with Snopes (I love debunking some of what's passed around as "truth") and while she is the author of the piece, the circumstances are not those described in the email that keeps circling the globe. “If I had My Life to Live Over,” was based on a column she wrote in 1979 when she was 52, not something she wrote on her death bed at 69—which was, by the way, not at the hand of cancer.

Knowing that she wrote it in mid-life and not at death’s door may take away from the melodrama, but it makes her list no less powerful to me. In fact, I hope she made some adjustments in the last 15 years of her life and regretted less in the end. Moreover, I hope the piece she wrote continues to encourage people on email everywhere to take stock and make adjustments. Why wait until the end, when it’s too late to change?...

Why keeping eating cottage cheese, when it’s ice cream you crave?