Virus Alert
by Deb Victoroff

In the past, whenever good friends moved away, they always promised to "write", or at least write back, and of course, never did. Never, that is, until e-mail. Now my friends not only keep in touch - they aggressively fondle me with every tiny bit of info-email that floats by, no matter how trivial. These pals of mine who once wrote me gorgeous essays on the most serious and intimate topics, and who expounded poetically on issues of ethics and politics, now send me petitions, pyramid letters and bad puns. Pages of them, every day, sometimes twice a day. I'm getting more junk mail now from close friends than I ever did from strangers.

And in among these non-letter missives, there often appears the inevitable notification, a combination between gossip and an alien sighting: The Virus Alert.

The first time it happened, I was thrown into a thrilling panic: a Computer Virus! Did I have it? Was I going to be part of the collective electronic consciousness that would be infected? Would I see all my friends down at the Free Computer Virus Clinic, lining up for cyber-synthesized penicillin?

The first virus warning I ever got was for "Melissa" which I took as an anthropomorphic indication that she was the jilted cyber girlfriend of the "2001" computer Hal. The Melissa virus sounded intimidating not just because I got the feeling it was younger than me and had a better job, but because vague reporting of its destructive trail allowed my imagination to run wild: that after it ate your hard drive, it would go to your refrigerator and eat all your leftovers, all your flowering plants and any small pets that had the bad luck to wander into its path.

I waited breathlessly for it to show its (type) face. I expected it to arrive attached to salutations like:
"Hey there sailor, looking for a good time?" or perhaps: "See Attachment: Typhus/Ebola only worse//WHOOPS: NO MORE HARD DRIVE.com", but it never appeared in my mailbox and I felt slighted.

Over time however, other viruses have come my way, most of them with benign-sounding, friendly names, as if they were being emitted from some pink, Barbie-doll iBook. There was "Kali" and I assume her auto: "The Love Bug"; an invitation: "Let's Watch TV!", plush toys called "Bugbear" and even: "New pictures of family!" and "A Card For You!" (at least someone still sends cards…).

Now I've become virus-paranoid. I don't open any email if the subject heading is unfamiliar, or even if it is familiar, but just too damn cheery. But that hasn't stopped one infection from slipping past my most vigilant efforts.

I call it the "You've Got Mail" infection because it doesn't require that you open mail from an anonymous source but actually embeds itself in letters from friends, just when they're getting to the good part: just when your pal is telling you that she ran into your ex with his new girlfriend and what he said, and then what she said, when all of a sudden, BAM! You're infected. "You've got mail, Hee Hee!" it might say, which you don't notice at first because of course you want to know what that blonde idiot in the too short skirt had to say. But that's when it gets you.

You'll notice that suddenly, your cuticles look ragged. Just below your armpits you'll suddenly find extra flesh flapping as freely as a museum banner. You'll notice that your thighs have morphed into flabby cushions and, if you're a woman, your legs, which you swear you shaved this morning, will have stubble again. Men will notice that what they affectionately referred to as "the spare tire" around their waist, is now the wheel from a Monster Truck rally.

And that's just the physical stuff.

Your mind will wander. You'll begin to wonder what your place in the universe is and why everybody got out of the stock market without telling you. You won't be able to get your mind off the guy at the bank who put you on hold and never picked up again.

But the most terrifying thing about this virus is: it's impossible to tell whether you're actually infected, or whether you've just started to look like this since you got your own blog and that, unlike everyone else's blog, yours had something to say.

What to do if you suspect you suspect you're a victim? Well, you can bet there's an anxiety-producing website on line that'll offer the cure. Only take you about 9 hours to find, and then about an hour to figure out how to use it. But what do you care? You're already sitting down.