Happy *&#Q@! Birthday, Sweetie
Lori Borgman | Monday, Sept 07, 2009
My nephew is getting a birthday card with penguin
on it that says “Gotta Dance, Gotta Sing, Gotta Do that Party Thing!”
My nephew is 32 and a big city attorney that lives
in Chicago.
I’d nearly forgotten about his birthday and it
was the best I could do on short notice.
Once you step outside the sweet and saccharin
genre of cards, there are three remaining categories: body noises,
babes and backsides.
The last time I looked at cards I inadvertently
opened one with sound that replicated a large farmyard animal, well,
you can guess. Cards about flatulence are big these days. (“When
you care enough to gas the very best.”)
This time I was on the alert for flatulence cards,
but I’ll be if they didn’t get me with belching. I opened a sound
card, and “BLECK!”
A kid with three nose rings and a Mohawk walking
down the aisle sneered at me and said, “Try saying excuse me. Were
you raised in a barn?”
A lot of things come to mind when I think of birthdays
-- cakes, candles, fire extinguishers, balloons, parties, piņatas,
streamers. Passing gas and belching have never been on the list.
Is it appropriate for an aunt to send a card about
flatulence? Or belching?
I picked up a card that said it was made out of
recycled fabric, opened it up, and the inside was made to look like
a pair of dirty underwear. I gagged and grabbed for my hand sanitizer.
All I wanted was a simple card with a quip or
a pun that would let a guy know we haven’t forgotten about him.
You’d think I was asking for the moon. They had that, too – popping
out of sun roofs, on top of a dog house and on the doctor’s exam
table.
So much flesh, so little imagination.
Another card compared a birthday to “p--ing in
your pants.” I haven’t discussed the subject of whether my nephew
“had to go” since he was two. His early 30s hardly seems like the
time to revisit the subject.
Another card had a picture of an elderly woman
on the front. When you opened the card, the little old lady offered
to “b” slap the card recipient.
It’s rough out there in the greeting card aisle
these days. The way things are going, it’s only a matter of time
before Helen Steiner Rice ventures into dirty limericks.
The research and development on greeting cards
is clearly being done in bus station bathrooms.
We spend $7.5 billion in this country on greeting
cards every year. In a world of texting, e-mailing and social networking,
we still like a card to hold in our hands. It’s one of the last
remnants of a personal touch.
Too bad the personal touch now comes with an open
palm followed by a right hook.
Eighty percent of all cards are purchased by women.
And card companies sure wouldn’t be making them if someone wasn’t
buying them.
