Cards

We were in Chapters today buying a card for an upcoming anniversary. Picking out a card isn’t as simple as it was when I was a kid, back then if I needed a Birthday card, I would pick one with a clown or a cake on it and that was that. Over the years it has become more and more difficult to pick out a card for a variety of reasons.

 

It turns out that when you give your wife a card, she expects you to have put at least some thought into the message and look of the card. A card with a flypaper roll covered in flies which says “We’re stuck together, like it or not!” doesn’t have the romantic quality that women want. I have always opted for humorous cards over the sentimental ones, but I suspect that is because I figure Louise knows how I feel about her and having me for a husband she is in desperate need of a good laugh.

I don’t even like the idea of cards that much. I like to get them of course, but after I have them, I don’t know what to do with them. Should I just toss them out with the used wrapping paper from the gifts? Should I put them on display? How long should I display them? What if they are crappy cards, I don’t want crappy cards on display for an indefinite time. What I do is display them until there is a pressing need for the space they are taking up and then I stack them together, largest to smallest, put an elastic around them and lovingly put them in a drawer or a box. I will forget about them of course and years later I will come across this pile of birthday cards with a stretched out, wrinkled elastic around them.

 

Now I have the problem of what to do with them all over again. I will go through them and if I am lucky I will come across one that says “I love you Daddy” or “to Poppa” and I will remember the day I got the card. I’ll get a new elastic and put the pile back in the box for another few years.

The cost of cards is ridiculous! Well, I think it is, but I know that I’m in the minority on this topic. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I got a card making program for the computer. With a minimal investment, I could print all of the cards my heart desires and say anything that I wanted to. The way it worked out though is that those computer printed cards weren’t up to snuff when it came to giving to loved ones. They were okay for work events, but a lined piece of paper torn out of a notebook was good enough for a work event. I still have the program and card stock, but I haven’t used it in years.

 

Some good friends have gotten into Scrapbooking and over the past few years and I have received some amazingly lovely cards. I’d like to think that I could make a card just as nice, but I just don’t have the patience or the inclination to do so. They must take hours and hours to make, and you can’t leave any glue fingerprints or put the picture on crooked. It has to look like a professional job which is why I think I will stick to the store bought Christmas cards.

 

The cards are so funny these days that I could spend hours just reading them, and I have.

My dad used to be in the card section with my mom and hand her a card which told her just how much he loved her. She would tear up and then dad would take the card and put it back on the shelf. He didn’t need to spend $2.50 on a card to tell her how much he loved her. Tonight, Louise did the same thing to me, but the difference was that now, cards are $7.50 and I know she really loves me because she put the card back on the shelf.