UnHappy Birthday 2 U, a time before email Options

[PalePhoenix]

The Envelope, Please...

Most Internet users, far and wide, can still remember an Age of Communication before this one. While it could be said that the Boomers were raised by TV, their shows are 'classic,' from well-crafted bits of stage play to cornball Westerns. They eventually gave birth to my generation who, by the late 60s, was being babysat by PBS and the Children's Television Workshop. Sesame Street and The Electric Company were on the scene long before abominations like Boo-Bah and the Teletubbies appeared for the mind-numbing delight of the pre-verbal.

It was still, for the most part--until the 1990s--a literate culture. We kept folks like Hallmark in business by commemorating every year we managed to keep our kids alive. From sincere sentiment to saccharin raunch, we extended our felicitations, our optimism, and financial gestures of remembrance not by e-cards or Flash-y animations, but through hardcopy characters and ironic images of obscene pleasure.

Whether you were just old enough to anticipate that check from Aunt Martha and Uncle Harry, or too young to have a clue what the hell was going on, the arrival of these messages meant that people were about to make a fuss over you. Some say horoscopes and the alignment of planets have great bearing on your personality throughout life, but I humbly suggest a simpler explanation: It's that special time of year, when you get gifts and parties, that you subconsciously recall for the rest of your existence; a season of sunshine or snow, when song and sweets are splattered across your psyche.

I was born in early Spring. April 1st, to be exact. I hereby posit that birthday cards were the pre-teen equivalent of porn. Don't believe me? Let's take a look...

This new series can be viewed as a 'companion piece' to Interior Design of the Damned. After all, doesn't this illustration just SCREAM "Happy Seventies," right down the to baker's hair and blouse? It's a somewhat suggestive pose, too. I really don't know anyone who'd grip a candle in quite that manner...without fear of hot wax burns, at the very least.

It's also especially touching when friends and relatives personalize a store-bought card. Sure, a name is on there, in deference to my own identity. But what's even funnier, there obviously had to be some recognition that the giving party was plural, not singular:

The 'we' were Aunt Martha and Uncle Harry. The check was probably $25, a vast and impressive sum for the time and to a child. How do I recall the exact amount? That's because it's the same thing they sent three and a half months ago. Apparently, they still think it's 1973, but being thirty-five now, it's OK if the token of their affections can barely buy dinner rather than the entire week of groceries it once did.

[PalePhoenix]

There were other commemorations, more legitimate than Xmas in their own way...but made no less frivolous by the disposable sentiments they portrayed:

Remember when you actually felt BAD if you didn't get at least one Valentine from another kid who wasn't icky? Jeeze, I almost long for the first years of elementary school, when one could still give them without regard to gender, and it would still be considered 'cute.' I'm sure the kittens aren't just lurking about because the knock-kneed lass smells strangely of tuna.

Of course, by the time I was to depart that K-6 k-hole, yet another card awaited me. It seemed to say, "Congratulations on being a big, smart boy. Here's a fluffy teddy bear to make you feel all growed up."