How Spam Saved My Day

I’ve just had a surreal experience that relates to email spam, of all things. A few moments ago I was checking my ‘junk’ email box- something I keep in order to have an address to enter into all those ‘email address required’ boxes on random websites. I occasionally receive meaningful messages at this address so I do check it from time to time.

So my eyes were scanning through the subject titles of my junk emails when they suddenly stuck to a message from Yahoo! or MSN or something or other News reporting on a shooting in Montreal- my hometown. I immediately closed the window and opened up to the website of The Globe and Mail- a large Canadian newspaper- to verify that the terrible news reported in a subject heading in my email spam, was true. To my horror it was. There have been casualties. The shooting occurred at my friend Shannon’s school.

If it hadn’t been for the junk mail message (not to mention the Internet) I don’t see how I would have learned about what happened in Montreal this afternoon until (and if) I sat down to watch the news tonight. By that time it would have been too late in Montreal to call Shannon and I would have wrung my hands all night. Because I did receive that email, though, I was able to call Shannon’s cellphone (which she’s had only a few months) at a decent hour on my cellphone (my first, which I’ve had 6 weeks), and find out that she got away from the shooting in time and is safe and sound at home. I never expected to say this but thank you, spam.