by Francesca Grace

Created on: May 30, 2009

The person who started the Forward To movement was Aunt Gwendolyn, or "Gwennie" as she asked the gals at the Golden Years Senior Living Community to call her. Yes, she was the hippest old gal in Bradenton. She had a cell phone long before that snob Joyce had her second hip replacement and got one from her daughter so they could be in contact even out on the shuffleboard court. Gwennie was first to buy a pair of Crocs even though they made her feet sweat, first to get a computer and surf the "internets" and first to sign up for an online dating service, which is how she met Leonard. A lovely man though his early dementia did cramp his conversation style.

On the down side of being a trend trailblazer, she was also the first to be oblivious to her neighbors deer in the headlights look when she dragged out her pictures from her last trip to Branson...again. It's a bit like playing the telephone game where you whisper a message to your neighbor down the line if then the game stopped and no one bothered to share what the original message had morphed into by the last whisper.

She didn't have a clue that her nightly soliloquies on life and wisdom and bunion treatments were met with thinly veiled frustration by anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the activity room with the exit door just beyond Gwendolyn. Not a day went by that she didn't arrive at the pool, at the mailboxes, at someone's front door with an article clipped from a newspaper that, she was certain, if they read it, it would change their lives. She did that each day for years until oddly, people started to "leave their glasses" at home so couldn't she just keep it for later? Or they were "in the shower" and hadn't heard her knock...for fifteen minutes.

One evening, just after Jeopardy, Gwennie was reading an article that she thought was exactly what Roberta needed, though she had been impossible to reach since last winter even though they lived four doors apart. I know! she thought. I can copy this story and I can send it in an email to Roberta and then she can have it wherever she is! It's perfect! And so the first forward was born.

There were no annoyed sighs or people staring over the tops of their glasses with murderous looks when the first and the second and the four hundred and ninety seventh forwarded email arrived in other peoples in-boxes, so Gwendolyn never discovered that they were never read. After the first ones had arrived for the unsuspecting address owners and they read them immediately, assuming they must be very important, the rest of them were deleted before they were even opened. And so she went merrily along her way and waved to her neighbors adding, isn't it a beautiful day? And when she got back to her room she would fill her hours searching out vital information to share with her dear friends who she was convinced couldn't function without her input and advice that she was so generously sharing each day from her computer.

It might be important to add that Aunt Gwendolyn was also the creator of the first holiday fruitcake. She knew her culinary invention was a total success when one December day, a package from a friend arrived at her home. Inside the familiar tin, in fact, it was exactly like the one she had sent out the year before, was a fragrant fruitcake that tasted remarkably like her own recipe! Ah yes, she had sent the recipe along with her fruitcake and so her friend must have taken the time to try and replicate her gourmet treat. Well, isn't that lovely, she thought. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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