E-mailed list features Dave Barry's '16 Things It Took Me Over 50+ Years to Learn''
Ifwe had to come up with a list of 'e-mail truisms,' one of the entries would probably something along the lines of: 'No list of funny headlines, humorous quips, witty observations, or the like will survive more than five forwardings in its original state.' It may sometimes take more than five forwardings, but 'list creep' inevitably seem to works its way into such mailings, with recipients along the chain eventually dropping off some previous entries, adding new ones, and modifying others.The '16 Things It Took Me Over 50+ Years to Learn' list attributed to humorist Dave Barry is a case in point. It originated back in 1997 as Dave Barry's '25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years' and has since been pared down to a reordered list of 16 items (some of which were not part of the original, and some of which have been modified). The mutated version has circulated so widely that it is noted in the FAQ on Dave Barry's web site:Q: Did Dave really write that piece floating around the internet, '16 Things I've Learned in 50 Years?' A: Well, he wrote something like it. But it's been changed during its travels around the world in email, and you can no longer count on anything in it being Dave's actual work. Q: Why would anyone do such a thing? A: We don't know. Dropped on their heads at birth, perhaps? The original list, as he wrote it, is called '25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years' and can be found in the book Dave Barry Turns 50.For the record, entries #1, #7, #15, and #16 included in the version displayed in the 'Example' block above were not part of the '25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years' piece as it appeared in Dave Barry Turns 50, and (contrary to the wording of entry #8) Barry described gossip as being the 'most powerful' (not the 'most destructive') force in the universe.The full text of the original piece has been reproduced on a number of web sites.
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