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]

These were also found in their original state. You might surmise that I lacked the patience or interest to put these items together, for the MINUTES OF FUN each would have endowed, but I was likely more attuned to whatever was attached to them.

It could also have been my resounding lack of pleasure in puppets, of the finger variety or otherwise. Even the Muppets grew stale, prematurely, when the 'magic' of their operation was intuited. I know David Cross has finally found his niche with Wonder Showzen, but we're talking about a wide target, here.

If anyone has the slightest idea what's in the red, sausage-shaped wrapper, I'm all ears.

[PalePhoenix]

Not surprisingly, the "Fire Engine to Put Together" was still in mint, pre-perforated condition inside the card. I entertained thoughts, after scanning, of actually assembling the delicate, red diversion, but I currently lack a digital camera for saving the results. If I can figure out a way to do a still with my crappy webcam, I'll post it here. Bonus points if I can capture it in flames.

I decided not to set my desk on fire just fer a larf, but I thought you'd appreciate seeing this dream realized. Not an easily achieved one, at that. I was really taken quite aback by the amount of effort required to separate this "toy" from its cardstock source. For starters, it wasn't really perforated. Those were, upon cursory examination, only drawings of dotted lines. Not even a scissor was adequate, given all the minor, jutting parts and acute angles. I had to use a tool which ought to be as forbidden to anyone under 18 as alcohol and voting: an X-Acto blade.

For scale, gracious fellow that I am, the fuzzy silver thing in the corner is a quarter. Once upon a time, these coins came attached to cards in the same manner one used to leave them for Jerry's Kids, in diners across America. You don't see that much, anymore. I will give one last shout out to Mom for missing the card from another Jerry and his wife Lillian that still had eleven dimes inside.

These were also found in their original state. You might surmise that I lacked the patience or interest to put these items together, for the MINUTES OF FUN each would have endowed, but I was likely more attuned to whatever was attached to them.

"Tweedledum and Tweedledee"

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Were ready to do battle,
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had broken his new rattle.

Just then flew by a monstrous crow
As big as a tar barrel,
Which frightened both our friends
So that they quite forgot their quarrel.

I shit you not, that's what was in the card. Never mind that "quarrel" and "barrel" hardly suffice for near-rhyme, I'm not sure that this Looking-Glass excerpt was intended to be wholly understood by children. While almost every imaginative plot needs a fiend, it sounds like a budding Hitchcock wrote this piffle. Moreover, it was an impractical juxtaposition of characters. Not because mildly retarded twins couldn't be set upon by some hybrid of ravens and moas...but that this exploit required three hands.