“MY BAD!” — HOW SORRY MUST I BE?

By Edwin Cooney

I like to do nice things for people that make them feel personally comfortable and appreciated in the present, as well as secure and optimistic in their future.

Hence, a couple of weeks ago, when a loving and well-meaning friend of many years sent me an item announcing that cell telephone numbers were about to be made available to telemarketers, I was anxious to spread the word. Their calls to your cell phone would end up costing you money.

Perhaps the greatest avenue of unfiltered everything these days is the internet. (I had started to write “unfiltered knowledge” but everything on the internet, or almost everything, is unfiltered, isn’t it?!) In short, the internet is a vast library of fact, fiction, fear, anger, love, hope, confidence, warnings, assurances, past, present and anticipated future.

The little announcement my friend sent to me explained that one could keep one’s cell phone number from intrusive telemarketers by calling the national “Do Not Call List” at 888-382-1222. The blurb assured readers that this would keep one’s cell phone number private for the next five years. Recipients of this information were to telephone the national “Do Not Call List” from their cell phones, not their landline phones. It sounded reasonable enough to me, so I passed this information on to most of my very favorite people.

Several very conscientious friends responded within minutes informing me that my information was false — and, even worse, a hoax. As documentation they sent me a link to Snopes, the urban legend people, who make it their business to separate fact from fiction in these volatile times. Here’s your copy:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

Fortunately for me and for my friends, the “hoax” was harmless. Calling the number (as I did) will add your cell phone to the Do Not Call Registry, but the government already prohibits telemarketers from calling cell numbers. Nevertheless, budding columnists are under a special obligation to distribute factual information even when doing so merely as a good neighbor. Hence, I’ve had to learn a basic lesson once again: get your facts straight, Cooney!

Embarrassing as the need for this reminder is, my need to “spread the word” is as American as Paul Revere, Samuel Morris, Alexander Graham Bell, Joseph Pulitzer or Bill Gates —- all individuals who employed various means to communicate information quickly.

The question for me then has to do with the urgency of communicating. What’s behind that urge?

When someone calls you to tell you that Uncle Harry has struck it rich or an old classmate is finally getting married or that a man named Washington got caught telling a lie in traffic court, what is your immediate tendency?

If you are like me, you will often have an urgent desire to share that information with those who mean the most. Seldom is that information ever documented and yet usually it is accurate.

A sense of urgency is inevitably based on one’s values. Certainly Paul Revere’s sense of urgency on the night of April 18-19, 1775 was not only a realistic urgency but, as it turned out, an historic one. The colonists’ safety and security was certainly in jeopardy. The desire to protect the wellbeing of others is a most basic and essential force that drives our individual sense of urgency.

I believe that most of us, in one way or another, strive to be helpful to others on a daily basis. All of us, in one way or another, like to inform, protect, and entertain those who matter to us. Therefore, we freely pass on tidbits of humor, inspiration, and information to one another. One of our strongest human needs, after all, is to be useful or, even more, to be needed.

Last week, I thought I had useful and perhaps even urgent information that I ought to pass on to others as a good citizen and as a friend.

Alas, my information was false. Even worse, it was a hoax and I was had. Due to my own recklessness, others might also be had. My bad!

Of course, information is valuable only if it is true. As one whose reputation as a writer largely depends on sound judgment, my lesson this week is that I must check and double check information even when I’m merely trying to be a good neighbor.

If the egg on my face from this occasion can hardly be anything but scrambled, the irony is that much of what I know that is wise and good very often can’t even be measured, let alone documented.

Hmmm! This just occurred to me. I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off as a distributor of ideas rather than being a distributor of FACTS! Don’t good ideas often create conditions for new and sound facts?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY