By Stuart Adelberg
I’m not a fan of greeting cards – never have been – never will be. As someone who devotes a ridiculous amount of time selecting every word that I write, the idea of purchasing something that someone who doesn’t know me has written to express a supposedly heartfelt sentiment is anathema to me. Sorry Hallmark.
With the above said, you may wonder how I came to scour the greeting card aisles in one of my favorite stores this past week and spent what I consider to be an excessive amount of money for a birthday card. Well, sometimes we put aside our convictions for the people we love!
My wife celebrated a birthday this week. My gift is a special day that is already planned. This is not a surprise – because you don’t surprise my wife with an event. She is the keeper and queen of our calendar. There is no way that I can schedule anything, no matter the occasion or how far in the future, without completely messing up our plans, which are always made in advance, with meticulous detail. Did I mention that these are documented in the daily planner that she purchases the day they are available. Surprises are neither welcome nor accommodated!!
Since she already knows how we plan to celebrate her birthday, and the event is not happening for another month, I needed a way to mark the occasion that morning. She had already expressed her gratitude for my generous gift, but my generosity would have been completely forgotten, if I failed to hand her something. Hence, my search for a meaningful card!
Despite my distaste for greeting cards, I do enjoy the process of searching for one. I admire the people who make a living composing these cards, especially the funny ones. I am that fool you see in the greeting card aisle pushing the button on every item with sound effects and laughing hysterically at the clever, typically mean, birthday cards. Of course, I can’t give any of those cards to my wife if I expect to have a place to sleep that night – but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying them while searching for the nice card I need to buy!
You can learn a lot about our society and its customs by searching through the greeting card aisles. For example, I am apparently not the only husband with a distaste for greeting cards and a fear of buying the funny ones for a wife. In the store, there was a whole section of birthday cards marked “husbands.” There was choice of about five marked “wives.” Of the cards for husbands there were quite a few marked “funny.” Evidently, wives don’t enjoy receiving humorous cards, since there was only one for them marked “funny” and I wasn’t brave enough to buy it!
Though today’s politics have made it uncomfortable to mention our diversity, this message has apparently not reached the greeting card makers. I was most impressed by the number of languages, varied relationships, and family structures represented by the available cards. Some of them were educational, languages I didn’t recognize and relationships I was not quite able to define. I’m good with all of it! I considered buying my wife a funny card in another language but lost my nerve.
I ultimately spent $10.00 for a flowery piece of cardboard that expressed my affection and best wishes for my wife’s birthday. I could never have written anything this serious or mushy, but $10.00 was a small price to pay for a smile and another year of happy marriage.
Stuart Adelberg has a long history of leadership and active involvement in the nonprofit arts and human services sectors throughout the region. He appreciates the opportunity provided by Greenwich Sentinel to share his occasional thoughts and observations.
