To Greeting Cards

I want one thing from a greeting card: for the recipient to open it and say, “HA!” and then read it again.

That’s asking a lot.

Sometimes I have to go to three or four stores to find one that I think will do the trick. I refuse to buy cards that are serious (except a bereavement card), that make fun of the person reading it (especially their age), that make fun of political figures (even if I know the reader would agree; greetings cards are no place for politics), have women with barely covered large breasts or men in shirtless firefighters suits. I don’t like jokes about sagging body parts and only very occasionally would buy one that references drinking a lot of alcohol.

So that eliminates about 80% of cards.

I like a good fart joke (rare, but possible). I enjoy puns (common, but not often clever). But mainly, it’s just the unexpected, the comedic timing between reading the front of the card and the punch line on the inside. When done well, it’s genius. I’ll pay $4 for that, even if I know it will be thrown away with the wrapping paper and packing materials.

Writing cards is a job I would never want. Bent over a drafting table, oil lamp on the desk corner, scribbling away with a quill. (I realize it’s all on computers these days, but high quality humor is somehow old-school like this.) Maybe there are several in a room, like a scene out of a Dickens novel. Or Jane Austen. Or Mary Shelley. If they were funny. The writers work so hard they sweat, worried for their jobs. Always, the younger writers wait at the window for their big break. A writer thinks she has a good one, revises it to get it just right, takes it to the head writer, who doesn’t write at all but holes himself up in a tiny office hiding behind stacks of paper. She hands it to him, and waits. Waits. Waits.

“HA! Good one!”