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From: see1@sphinx.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.ibm.pc,soc.misc,soc.net-people,misc.misc
Subject: Re: please help
Message-ID: <3774@sphinx.uchicago.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 88 18:18:05 GMT
References: <1600@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <409@vsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: see1@sphinx.uchicago.edu.UUCP (Ellen Keyne Seebacher)
Followup-To: misc.misc
Distribution: na
Organization: U Chicago Computation Center
Lines: 33

In article <409@vsi.UUCP> friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>>  David is a 7 year old boy who is dying from Cancer.  Before he dies,
>>  he has a dream of one day being in the Guinness Book of Records for
>>  the person who has had the most postcards sent to them.
>
>This is great!  I've only been on the net a month and I've just
>seen the *second* cycle of this perpetual hoax.... tons of mail to
>this fictitous person (the receiving post office hates it).  How
>can this happen so often, and why is the little kid always in
>England?

You're not going to believe this, Steve, but this one is real.  (I've been
on the net for four years, and I'm familiar with perpetual hoaxes.)  The
Urban Legend you're thinking of usually involves "Little Buddy," who lives
in Scotland, not England.  

Until about a year ago, the Guinness Book people swore up and down they
wouldn't include a Little Buddy if he/she/it DID exist...but they apparently 
changed their minds.  David is real (did you notice there's a real school name
on this one?  not a PO Box?), and as another poster has pointed out, the kid
has more than reached his goal.  Don't bother to send him any more.

Okay, so some people are suckers for this sort of thing...I just had to call
the University of Chicago Maroon [affectionately known as the Moron] and quash
yet another Little Buddy plea, this time by a games columnist...but at least
they have good hearts.

Or something.  :-)


-- 
Ellen Keyne Seebacher              University of Chicago Computation Center
staff.ellen@chip.uchicago.edu      ...{ihnp4!gargoyle, oddjob}!sphinx!see1