Birthday Wishes

Several years ago people started to send e-cards for birthdays. The first few were novel. I would print them out and put them on my dining room table with the rest of my birthday cards. I remember my first card. It was from my grade school friend, Rachel on my birthday in 2001. I thought it was the absolute coolest thing.

I started looking into e-cards and I decided it was the most awesome thing around. I scheduled for e-cards to be sent to my family on all the obscure holidays such as "Sneak Zucchini On Your Neighbor's Porch Night." It was fun. Did I already use the word novel? I still did my best to send a card or call on my friends' birthdays.

Fast forward a few years. Birthday cards that were mailed got fewer and fewer. The ratio of e-cards to cards was about 1:1. My dining table still had some cards but no wear near what they had been years before. I no longer printed the e-cards because they all had animation and printing them just looked stupid. They could not be folded and stood up on the table. E-cards started to get old and stale.

E-cards are rarely received now. All birthday wishes on on my Wall on my Facebook page. Yes, even in the heyday of cards, I never got over 100 birthday wishes. It was nice that so many people took a moment out of their day to write on my wall "happy birthday" or some other saying of the sort. There is still just something about a birthday card.

My husband and I have birthdays that are four days apart so most of our friends used to send our cards on the same day. This year, by the week after our birthdays, we had a total of four birthday cards. Each of us got one from our Realtor and one from our insurance agent. I was a bit upset. Yes, we had just spent a week with my parents and saw my grandmother, so I kind of understand. But there is just something about opening the mailbox and seeing an envelope with your name on it, written in ink by a real hand. You see the stamp and look at the return address label. You know it is a birthday card. And you just have a little bit of excitement. Will it be funny? Will it be sappy? Will it make me cry or laugh or just smile? Or, will there be a gift inside? Photos? Money? Who cares. Someone actually sent me a card!! That means, they either went to the store specifically to buy me a card or they went through their stack of cards and chose one for me. They signed their name, they licked the envelope, they stuck the stamp and they sent it with the intention of me receiving it on or before my birthday. Man, that takes some forethought.





TBC....