Once upon a time, I used to do it on a regular basis, but over time it got really boring. Absolutely no creativity anymore among the whole lot, I concluded, and gave it up as a lost cause.

At about this point, I can – in my mind’s eye – see readers reaching for the nearest object with intent to harm me. ‘Is this how you begin a post, Shail?’ they ask in one voice, gritting their teeth. ‘Is this the lesson mother taught you?’ Well, if I might say so, mother did teach me to get their attention with the first sentence and though being vague and cryptic was not how she would have wanted me to do it, hopefully it worked. Anyways, I will try and make things clearer here on.

Once upon a time my hobby of a morning had been to check the spam comments. What? I like a good laugh just like the next person. What better place to find it than in the spam folder?! If you don’t believe me, you just have to read about dear Jarvis and the guy who was looking for a toothbrush, in my blog page of all places! But they don’t make them like those early ones any more. Slowly the quality started deteriorating. Pages and pages of copied stuff interspersed with medical jargon does not tickle your funny bone. As for invitations to sites where you can apparently see people take off their clothes and perform acts is doubly boring. So, gradually I stopped checking the spam comments.

Today for no reason other than nostalgia, I went to take a look. There were the usual essays with bilirubin, malaria, thyroid, angina and other words thrown in. Yawn. Then came links galore to same old sites. Double yawn. No, thank you. And then I stopped short at one comment noticing the urgency of it. Buy it NOW! On taking a second look, I raised my eyebrows. First, I don’t agree with making ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is, stand for longer. Come on, be humane, give ‘it’ a chair and let ‘it’ sit for a while. And then I realized ‘it’ was something that did not concern me, not owning one myself.

I moved on to the next one. It was in Spanish and posted repeatedly in many posts. The guy seemed desperate. Muchas gracias, he wrote. I didn’t know why I was being thanked, but whatever, what a well-mannered sort of guy, I thought appreciatively. That is when I noticed the next part. Como puedo iniciar sesion? He wanted to know how to log in. Oh no, you don’t, you wily creature! Lulling me into false security with unnecessary thank-yous and then trying to worm in? Thou shalt not take another step to log in and defile my precious WordPress dashboard. The very idea!

The next one was from Weldon Rasool. Today, I went to the beachfront with my children, he wrote. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell someone! That did it. I had had enough. My faith in humanity had taken a beating. A hermit crab had pinched his four-year old daughter’s ear and the guy was on the net laughing about it to a total stranger? I wished I could send a hermit crab – on special duty – to pinch the man’s ears, both of them. Right now I am on the look out for hermit crabs willing to take on the mission.

P.S. Taking this post seriously is injurious to health.

© Shail Mohan 2021