Mixed greetings

Throughout the years, the greeting card industry started frustrating me more and more. I'd search through the entire section that was supposed to have what I was looking for only to come up empty-handed 90% of the time. There were several problems I would be reminded of every time I went card-shopping.

First, the "funny" ones were rarely funny. Second, if they were indeed funny (and I still remember a few from back in the day), there was a high probability that I already received them from others. Third, there were hardly any simple sentiments. For example, I'd look for a card to say, "Happy Birthday, Grandma. I love you and wish you the very best on this day." Boom. That's it. What I'd find would be a card with three or four stanzas of rhymed couplets probably written by a 15 year-old girl. "My special Grammy makes me say/I love you each and every day," for example. I just made that up, but I guarantee you it's somewhere on a card. That's the shit I was sorting through.

At first, my course of action was to find the blank card section. Hey look, a pretty picture with no words to screw it up! Those allowed me to keep my thoughts short, sweet, and accurate. That's the other problem with the crappy couplets. An anniversary card might say, "We've had our problems in the past/but through it all our love will last." Well, if I was looking for a we-separated-briefly-but-are-now-back-together-anniversary card instead of a we've-been-dating-four-months-anniversary card, that might have made some sense. Blank cards were the way to go...until I got a shtick.

It started off with purposely buying the wrong birthday number on the card. I'd either buy a kids' card for a 7th birthday and put a 4 in front of each 7 for my Dad's 47th, or I'd buy a 30th birthday card, cross out every 30 and put a 47 there instead. I completely stopped looking for the right card. In fact, I started actively searching for the most incorrect cards possible. My brother's birthday? Congratulations on Joining the Coast Guard! Grandparents' anniversary? Welcoming your new baby boy to Christ's love. Fathers' Day? My condolences on the loss of your cat. And so on. I actually did get my mom a Mothers' Day card once, but it read "You've been like a mother to me" on the front.

Not only did card shopping become both easier and more fun, but family members started looking forward to my cards and finding funny ones for me as well. I'd created a monster, and the monster was so much better than the boring, fluffy crap we were all blindly accepting. I just got an e-card from my mother-in-law wishing me a joyous Kwanzaa last week, for example. Perfect - the legacy is growing. I only buy accurate cards for weddings, births, and deaths - ya know, because it's kinda hard to maximize the funny in those situations.

So, Happy 23rd Birthday today, United States, and Happy Cinco de Mayo to the rest of you.