Sure, my headline has a title that is grammatically wrong, but if you stick with this, you will see that it is right in line with the main theme.

I got an email from a Nigerian prince who needs a place to stash his inheritance. It amounts to little more than two million American dollars. Quite a sum and quite enticing. The offer was so good that I decided to study the email and get into its style, word choice and general mood. I wanted to get to know what the emailer was all about and what he wanted to give me as his friend across the wide Atlantic ocean. I was driven to get to the bottom of this strange plea for help in processing an amazing sum of money. Why me of all people? Is this kismet? Has the god of Nigeria at long last decided to shine down upon me? I continued to read, but this time with an open heart and joyful mind. The words, the wonderful words tickled me, so I share with you now the very opening of this email for you to work this thing out with me…

“Dear Respectful One,
Good a thing to write you. I have a proposal for you-this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel you to honour against your will. I am Larry Smithers, II, .22years old and the only SON of my late parents Mr.and Mrs.SMITHERS . My father was a highly reputable busnness magnet-…”

Now, let’s analyze this letter, beginning with the salutation, “Dear Respectful One.” It’s nice and warm. But I don’t know if I am respectful or respected. What did Mr. Larry Smithers, II, from Nigeria mean to say? Why does he respect me? Has he read my work? Does he know me and my interest in arts, painting, history and brilliant actors like Jerry Stiller? How can he read into my very soul? I am enchanted and read more…

I studied the first sentence, “Good a thing to write you.” Maybe this guy was schooled in Italy, with Chico Marx as his professor. It makes me want to answer, “I’ma lika you. I’ma glad thata you decide to writa me.”

Then we come to sentence two: “I have a proposal for you…” Okay, so far I think I would give Mr. Larry an “A” for getting to the point. He has a proposal. He wants to sell me or give me something, or to make a deal. He’s upfront and straightforward. He is a mensch. What could it be? I’m all ears, Mr. Larry. I am deeply interested and inclined to read further. Mr. Larry should be in the advertising field. He has the technique down pat. He draws me in like a hummingbird to a flower. I want to know. I need to know. What is it, Mr. Larry Smithers from Nigeria? Do tell me. What can your offer be?

Okay, Mr. Larry will tell me. He wants to make a deal. Best of all he is a low pressure, soft sell kind of guy. I know this because he follows up with “however is not mandatory or will I in any manner compel you to honour against your will.” Now that is one magnificent sentence. It is chock full of ideas; unfortunately, I don’t know what he’s saying. I don’t understand Nigerian, even if it’s in English. My bad. My fault. Mr. Larry has managed to confuse the crap out of me. I don’t know what he means. He doesn’t say what he means. He has caused discombobulation in my brain. My mind is reeling. What is he saying? It’s not mandatory. I don’t have to do it. I can just think about it, and if I don’t like it, we can part friends. Maybe if I am in Nigeria one day and we bump into each other, Mr. Larry and I can share a cup of coffee and kick back. He can tell me how his day went and I can tell him about mine. No strings attached. He thinks I have honour, spelled the British way. Has he confused me with a Brit or a Canadian? Does he know the difference between America and Vancouver? Does he spell color “colour”?

And what is he trying to say about “compel you to honour against your will?” I’m afraid I do not know. It’s a puzzle; a conundrum; an idiomatic enigma from an enterprising ethnic entrepeneur. Maybe Mr. Larry works for the New York Times Puzzler department in the back near the Crosswords fellow. I can’t make heads or tails out of this part of his sentence. It will have to wait until we have more sophisticated scientific instrumentation and linguists to solve the mystery. It could be fifty years or more into the future until this part of Mr. Larry’s email can be translated into simpler terms. He is a seer, ahead of his time, somewhere out of an HG Wells novel. Set it aside. Let’s ignore it for now. Don’t spend another moment trying to figure it out. Move on, I say.

Mr. Larry Smithers, II, says he is .22 years old. Like a stone, I fall to the floor. I grab my head. It’s fucking impossible, I say. Cannot be. The world as I know it turns inside out. I am a hobbit inside the earth instead of on top of it. I lose all sense of direction, like a bad compass you buy in the toy department at Target. How old did he say he was? Wow! he’s barely an infant. “Point 22″ means you were basically born an hour ago. Reading this, I now feel I am in the midst of a child prodigy. Soon he’ll be playing Mozart on the Tonight Show. Oprah will have him on doing card tricks and singing a duet with Pavoratti. He and Noam Chomsky can play chess and discuss the mental failings of Medieval poets from A to Z.

Point 22 years old is just too young to imagine. A baby using a computer to write to me from across he world! He can write and read and is in a third world country. I have high hopes for Larry. So I read on.

What’s this? Suddenly I feel sad and want to help him. He’s touched my empathetic, humanistic side. He tells me he is an only child and his parents are dead. I start to cry. I cannot help it. I am on my back now, turning left and right and right and left, like Curly from the Three Stooges. It hurts so bad. Make it stop!

I reach for a handkerchief and wipe my eyes. I can hardly see through the tears. My computer screen is a blur; it’s like trying to read through an aquarium. I am sobbing like a mother whose child just got into Harvard Med school despite the fact that she washes floors at night and spent her last bit of change getting on the bus. Larry is only child. Dead parents. How sad and pathetic. But he’s a brave fella who is reaching out to the world. I’m here for you little Larry Smithers, II, of Nigeria. I am all ears. My eyes dry up and I make myself a cup of tea and come back to read on. Once in a while I sniffle, but I’m okay. I’ll be alright. Don’t worry about me.

In the next breath, Mr. Larry informs me his father was a “business magnet.” This is interesting, I think. A business magnet. Odd. A human magnet. Sounds like the makings of a Spiderman sequel. I wonder if perhaps Mr. Larry’s father got stuck to metal objects if he came too close. How could he go to the fridge for a drink of milk in the middle of the night without clinging to the side besides the little letters that spell out funny things for the family to read?

Then I think, maybe this is how he died. Larry Smithers senior was walking down the block happy as a lark when a bus came along. Like any other powerful magnet, he was pulled to the metal. He was holding the hand of his wife, Mrs Larry Smithers senior, and off they went together, stuck to the bus. You could hear the shouts of passersby:

Passerby in Nigeria One: “Don’t look, Stanley, There’s a man and wife stuck to the side of a bus. It doesn’t look good! Oh my lord!”
Passerby in Nigeria Two: “Where? I wanna see! Where?”
Passerby in Nigeria One: “I specifically directed you not to look. Don’t look. I’ll narrate.”
Passerby in Nigeria Two: “I’d like to see for myself, but if you insist…”
Passerby in Nigeria One: “They are stuck to the bus and it’s making a turn down Main Street toward the train station. Not the train station! Heavens no! The train is coming by. Oh, sweet Jesus, the couple have now gotten attached to the train. It’s terrible. Don’t look…”
Passerby in Nigeria Two: I am not looking. You told me I wasn’t allowed. I don’t want to get into trouble with you.

Passerby in Nigeria One: Good. This is bad. Oh, the humanity! They are gone forever. I really liked them too. What is little Larry going to do without his parents? Where will he turn for help? What will he do with all their money? He’s going to need to write to America for a place to put their coins. I wonder if Larry II will give me his father’s chair. I always liked that chair, and since this train incident, he won’t have any use for it. The chair would go nice in the den.

Well, it’s quite sad what happened to Larry’s mom and dad. It shows you how dangerous it can be to walk around magnetized. Larry’s letter went on to tell me that he has two million of dollars he needs me to put in my bank account. He trusts me implicitly to be his partner, which is quite insightful for a .22 year old. I give him credit. Still, I don’t think I’m up to the task. I have an inkling, as well, that Larry isn’t quite being forthcoming with me. I get this from the way he says at the bottom of his email, “If you are so of such personage, please to give this a deposit and send me the proceeds of your personal information.”

I had to call a UN interpreter for this last piece of writing. I was told by Nagatu Umbilca, Nigerian Third District, PA, that it’s possible the letter may be a scam. This, I have to say, broke my heart. I was ready to hand over my social security number, home address and personal savings which amounts to $124.43, not to mention a genuine leather wallet worth $8.95 at any of your better department stores.

My close friend since college, Mr Steve Adamsky, advised, “People like little Mr Larry have deep issues. It’s best to avoid emailing him back.” Sound advice? You bet. But still I contemplated that somewhere in Nigeria there is an infant typing these letters. I can only hope he doesn’t one day become magnetized and suffer a fate similar to that of his parents.

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