My name is Billy Evans. I am a very sick little boy. My mother is typing this for me, because I can't. She is crying. The reason she is so sad because I'm so sick. I was born without a body. It doesn't hurt, except when I try to breathe. The doctors gave me an artificial body. It's a burlap bag filled with leaves. The doctors said that was the best they could do on account of us having no money or insurance. I would like to have a body transplant, but we need more money. Mommy doesn't work because she said no one hires crying people. I said, "Don't cry, Mommy" and she hugged my burlap bag. Mommy always gives me hugs, even though she's allergic to burlap and it makes her sneeze and chafes her real bad. I hope you will help me. You can help my if you post this message everywhere you can. Dr. Johansen said that every time this message is posted, Bill Gates will team up with AOL and send a nickel to NASA. With that funding, NASA will collect prayers from school children all over America and have the astronauts take them up into space so that the angels can hear them better. Then they will come back to earth and go to the Pope, and he will take up a collection in church and send all the money to the doctors. The doctors could help me get better then. Maybe one day I will be able to play baseball. Right now I can only be third base. I try to be happy, but it's hard. I wish I had a kitty. I wish I could hold a kitty. I wish I could hold a kitty that wouldn't chew on me and try to bury its turds in the leaves of my burlap body. I wish that very much. Thank You, Billy "Smiles" Evans Nintendo Friend Code: 3883-4816-5049 Add me!
Touching, but snope'd. It's a retelling of John W. Schlatter's A Simple Gesture, slightly edited; narrated in the first-person rather than the third, and the names swapped. Glurges like these are written to appeal to either our a) feelings of sentimentality or b) moral code. As a general rule of thumb, people are saps. Add to that the fact that your average Internet user does not bother to cite their sources, and well. These stories are quick to circulate the Internet.
