Rumors

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive! Those terms used to be used at the beginning of radio and TV shows to describe Superman. Now they can be used for another purpose: To describe rumors. This Internet is a most powerful center of knowledge isn't it? The world is at our fingertips, with the stroke of a key we can obtain information on almost every imaginable subject the human mind can conjure. But........There is one slight difficulty....Not everything we find is complete or even true! This simple fact may well be a major factor in why so many apocalyptic rumors are spreading across the planet.

My parents, teachers and mentors constantly warned me about believing rumors. Rumors were simply another form of gossip and gossip is a terrible thing. For the most part, I followed their advice. Some rumors have been downright silly: "A friend's, cousin's, next door neighbor, heard a truck driver telling a waitress about this guy in Nevada that wanted to sell his new Corvette for $600 because he went hunting, shot and killed a deer, put it in the storage area but ran out of gas in the desert before making it back to his house, he walked to a highway, got a ride with a trucker, stopped at a diner to eat, got food poisoning, went to the hospital and stayed there for a week until he got better. When he finally got home and had someone give him a ride back to the Corvette with a can of gas, the deer had decomposed and stunk up the car so bad they can't go near it. I know a woman that actually took a bus to Nevada to find that Corvette and bring it home for only $600. Never found it!

In the past year several television news reporters have uncovered breaking news stories without checking and double checking the source and wound up passing on unfounded rumors. Eventually the truth was discovered and they apologized but in many cases the harm was already done. That's what rumors do.

Yesterday a guy called me at my business. (I own a clean up shop for cars, trucks and motor homes.) He was all excited. "Can you get the smell of Horse manure out of a brand new motor home?" he asked. I explained that it is quite a process but, "Yes!" I was sure we could. "Why do you ask?" I'm just about to leave for Gaylord, a few hundred miles up North. My boss told me about a guy he know that knows a guy that talked to a woman that had just bought a new Bluebird motor home for $750,000 and her ex husband filled it with horse manure just to be mean. Now they can't get the smell out of it and she's going to sell it for $1500 just to be rid of it.

If he brings it back I'll help him but I'm not going to hold my breath. Rumors, I guess we'll never learn...............Here's one for you: Don't worry about anything, the government's going to take care of us. I saw it on the Internet.