by Joe Paradis

Created on: December 10, 2008

Greeting Cards

"Now get one for each of them," my wife instructed me. "One for your father and one for mine. And get a birthday card for Robert too."

"Yes, ma'am," I responded. "I think I can cover that." And off I went to make the rounds of my Saturday morning chores, which generally includes a stop at the post office, a hardware store or two, and now, given my latest orders from the boss, a little side trip to the Half Price Card Shop.

With Father's Day just around the corner, my card shop trip was a bit sad. Most of the cards had already been picked through and it appeared that I had some competition for the few remaining cards that had matching envelopes. A little white-haired lady with a pretty ominous-looking cane seemed to be eying every card I was interested in. Each time I reached for one, her quick, bony hand seemed to find it first. Now, all stereotyping aside, I was looking at Father's Day cards for my father, in the "cards for father" section. If she was looking in the same section, her father must have been about 110 years old. So maybe she was just out browsing. Or should have been in the "cards for son" section. She was, most probably, sent by the devil to teach me a lesson for always buying my greeting cards at the last minute. But just to get rid of my tormenter, I deftly moved down the aisle and put a couple of 3-year-old kids between us, as they happily pawed through the cards on the bottom row, while their mom did her last minute browsing. It worked. They blocked my tormenter like a couple of NFL line backers at the Super Bowl. I grabbed a few cards and ran for the register, expecting at any minute to feel that cane against my backside.

Now truthfully, to my mind, most greeting cards are very impersonal and as such, not worth the money. As a country, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year just on Christmas cards alone. Most of us scribble our name on each card and nothing more, allowing the usually lame printed greeting to "say what we really mean". We either send them out to people we see all the time, or to people we never see or haven't seen in years. And we get cards back from some of them. The day after Christmas, we all throw them away. Now maybe that's okay, because communication is a good thing and it is nice to hear from someone with whom we haven't corresponded since probably last Christmas. But it seems a bit wasteful to me.

On the other hand, as a kid, I loved getting cards. Mostly, of course, because they usually contained

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>