Cards
Went looking for a card for my grandfather’s birthday the other day. Tried three different stores; saw a total of maybe 20 different cards “for grandpa/grandfather”. 70% were ‘to grandpa’ with puppies and/or kittens or balloons or something in bright crayon colors… nice to send if you’re 7, but it’s 20 years too late for that. 20% were apparently “celebrating African-American culture, heritage and traditions”, which is okay except that it’d be a bit odd in this particular case. This leaves roughly 2 cards, neither of which said anything remotely like what I’d had in mind.
Perhaps this is a slightly contrived example… stores can’t stock dozens of cards for every possible combination of sender, recipient and occasion, and there probably aren’t that many guys in their 20s who send their grandparents birthday cards. Realistically, the odds of adults having living grandparents to send cards to drops every year both parties get, after all. But it was almost as difficult to find birthday-for-mom-from-son and birthday-for-dad-from-son and parents-anniversary-from-son cards - all of which would seem a bit more common to send.
All this leaves me to wonder …. am I not “supposed” to send my grandfather a birthday card? Am I no longer in a card-sending demographic? Am I supposed to be married and let my wife pick out cards “we” are “supposed” to be sending? (Note that I have no particular objection to at least the first part of that expectation.)
Anyway, I’ve decided to start making my own. Print out a photograph, paste it and a custom-written message printed in an elegant-looking font onto blank off-white cardstock, fold it up and ship it off. Wish I’d thought of it in time for my grandfather this year…. I look forward to making one for him in 2005 
3 Responses to “Cards”
Evil Doug on 22 Jul 2004 at 5:10 am #
Tried to find a nice, romantic, just because kinda card recently…all I found were the scariest cards I have ever seen…”Twisted Whiskers.” If you’ve seen’em, you’ll know. Wiggy photo-shopped kittens and puppies that look like freaky anime villains. GAAAAH!
I think the card industry focuses on children and women age 16-85. No other group sends greeting cards, I suppose, is the message they want to send to us males over age 10…well, unless you count the rather seedy cards one finds at Spencer Gifts…but those aren’t exactly what one would purchase for a grandfather…
Orange on 27 Jul 2004 at 3:30 am #
I always thought the twisted animals cards would be more entertaining to design than a dozen redundant variations on flowers/landscapes/whatever. At least it means fun with photoshop. But no, I can’t imagine really wanting to give one of those to anyone… surrealist puppies really dont’ say convey any message I’d want to say. (So far, anyway. It’s too soon to tell, after all.)
I’m sure you’re right about who buys cards (or at least, to whom cards are sold). I was also trying to think of acceptably masculine pictures for cards that Hallmark et al. could look into - ducks/fishing/hunting/golf all seem about worn out. Building stuff, maybe. Cars. Big game. (I want a card with a wallaby on it.)
Orange on 18 Aug 2004 at 2:01 pm #
I found a new twist on twisted animals … bobbleheads. Don’t even have to go far to find them, they lurk in Wal-Mart.