Stop Right Now

I have written before about my Dad's buddy 'Old Pete'. A long time friend of my fathers who has pretty well been around for as long as I can remember.

Pete is about my Dad's age, which is mid-seventies and obviously also retired. The big difference between Pete and my father is that Pete always blurts out whatever may be on his mind, no matter how foolish, inappropriate, antiquated or extremely politically incorrect the statement may be. The reason I say he is different than Dad is that my father is probably like that but Mom has reprimanded him so frequently he is like radio, there is generally a 5 second delay between his thoughts and his outward verbal comments. And sometimes that delay is not long enough for my Mom!

Anyway, back to 'Old Pete'.

So I always recall from my childhood how funny Pete seemed to be. He would mimic the actions of the lame by pretending to drag his 'dead limbs' around or wear funny t-shirts such as "Kill Khomeini" or "I'm with Stupid" and an arrow would point to whomever he was standing beside. These were hilarious antics to a young boy such as myself. Unfortunately as I got older, Pete's material stayed stagnant which unfortunately no longer made me laugh but rather, I just wince.

Of course now he has a new audience. Just last week he had my eight year old nephew, Mikey, in near hysterics when he asked him to "pull my finger". Both the accompanying noise and the 'subsequent expulsion of gas' had Mikey in tears laughing so hard. Unfortunately this juvenile type humour does not seem in the least bit amusing any more to me or probably any adult.

OK, I will admit that last week I also did laugh too, but only because one of my mothers church friends, Mary Thompson, was standing in the corner and observed the entire joke with a look of extreme horror as her face twisted in shock and disgust at the 'punch line'. It was Hilarious!! HAHA - Actually still is!

So now these days Pete has also taken his political incorrectness "High Tech" by using a computer to forward his odd 'brand of humour' to anyone who he knows that has not set up a filter to delete anything received from him as soon as it arrives. Unfortunately, I was one of those poor recipients and this is what he sent below. (note those that are easily offended should probably stop reading now)

THE CANADIAN WELFARE POEM I cross ocean, poor and broke, Take bus, see employment folk. Nice man treat me good in there, Say I need to see welfare. Welfare say, 'You come no more, We send cash right to your door.' Welfare checks, they make you wealthy, Medicaid it keep you healthy! By and by, I got plenty money, Thanks to you, Canadian dummy. Write to friends in motherland, Tell them 'come fast as you can.' They come in turbans and Ford trucks, I buy big house with welfare bucks They come here, we live together, More welfare checks, it gets better! Fourteen families, they moving in, But neighbour's patience wearing thin. Finally, white guy moves away, Now I buy his house, and then I say, 'Find more aliens for house to rent.' And in the yard I put a tent. Send for family they just trash, But they, too, draw the welfare cash! Everything is very good, And soon we own the neighbourhood. We have hobby it's called breeding, Welfare pay for baby feeding. Kids need dentist? Wife need pills? We get free! We got no bills! Canadian crazy! He pay all year, To keep welfare running here. We think Canada darn good place! Too darn good for the white man race. If they no like us, they can scram, Got lots of room in Pakistan . It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1, 890.00 and each can also get an additional $580.00 in social assistance for a total of $2,470.00. This compares very well to a single pensioner who after contributing to the growth and development of Canada for 40 to 50 years can only receive a monthly maximum of $1, 012.00 in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement. Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees! Lets send this to all Canadians, so we can all be ticked off and maybe we can get the refugees cut back to $1,012.00 and the pensioners up to $2,470 00 and enjoy some of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 years. Please forward to every Canadian to expose what our elected politicians are doing - to the over-taxed Canadian. SEND THIS TO EVERY CANADIAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW

Although on the initial read the poem itself is mildly amusing as it did give me a laugh, I could not begin to tell you how many places it was incredibly politically incorrect. On top of that, the allegations detailed after the poem seemed a little far-fetched to me, so being a man of logic and reason, I checked it out on Snopes.com, which is a site that is the best resource for validating and debunking urban legends and internet rumours.

So sure enough, I was right ! This false little story of 'Old Petes' has been circulating around for a while within Canada, Australia and USA. You can read about it  HERE .



Of course I sent the link to both my father and Pete, in the hopes that they would both do a little fact checking prior to blindly forwarding emails and actually stop filling up my inbox with their insane spam.

Pete never responded. (Dad claims Pete probably has MY emails filtered out to go to his spam account!)

My Dad however did email me a short reply as follows:

Stick it! I liked the story and I'm betting its true. The government has been screwing over all of us poor pensioners for years. Maybe your damn Snoopy site is wrong, ever thought of that, wisenheimer?

So obviously, as you can see, some folks are just a little too 'set in their ways' to change much. But hopefully for those of us that are not, maybe the next time you receive an email and are about to hit the FORWARD button because you want to share it, maybe just stop and click over to the Snopes site first and verify that it is true before you send it.

If everyone starts to do that, the inbox you save from spam may be your own !