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[personal profile] which_chick
Some people feel I'm out of line in expecting the rest of the world to bend to my whims. Me, I think we'd just get where we are going a bit faster.



In 2004, my aunt Linda went into the hospital for cancer surgery. I sent her an email 5-18-2004, which contained the following paragraphs:

Mom emailed me to say that you were going into the hospital for colon cancer surgery. She also suggested that you could do with a card. Mom has apparently failed to notice that I am not particularly a sender of cards. I think it's a deliberate blindness, really.

Anyway, given the motherly prompting, I hied myself to Wal-Mart and perused the card selection in their greetings emporium-ette. My initial resistance to the idea of sending of Hallmark bromides was reconfirmed when I read the cards in the sympathy and get-well-soon sections of the display. There were a lot of banal platitudes with soft-focus pastel pictures of flowers on the front. There were some cards alluding to the Lord's will, which I considered briefly from a black humor perspective, but that idea was ultimately discarded because all of the cards referring to one's Christian faith were too tacky for me to spend money on. I do have some standards, you know.

I could not find a single suitable card that expressed anything along the lines of "Cancer? That sucks. Hope you don't die." As that *is* the primary sentiment from this quarter, I decided that Hallmark wasn't really very interested in helping me express myself and that I'd have to do my own damn expressing. So. Cancer? That sucks. Hope you don't die. Also? All the people that wimped out and sent Hallmark? They mean what I said. They're just too tactful to say so.


Okay? See that? That there is me complaining that Hallmark does not have cards suitable for all occasions, particularly if one's taste does not run to soft-focus pictures of fucking bouquets.

Now, let us look at a news item from today. (You have to go clicky and read. Please? It's for a good cause.)

The idea? I had it three years ago. If people had just listened to me, we'd have had "Cancer? That sucks. Hope you don't die!" cards for absolutely ages already. I mean, honestly, that's what people mean. They don't have the balls to say it, but that's the general sentiment. Hallmark, which prides itself on helping people express the appropriate sentiments, needs to have a card like that.

(In case anyone is worried, my aunt Linda isn't dead yet.)

Date: 2007-02-17 12:44 am (UTC)
ext_77607: (Default)
From: [identity profile] wootsauce.livejournal.com
Cancer aside, "General encouragement for teenagers?"

Date: 2007-02-17 12:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] which-chick.livejournal.com
I dunno. Kids these days are so soft... Back in my day, we didn't have "general encouragement".

Date: 2007-02-17 02:29 am (UTC)
ext_77607: (Default)
From: [identity profile] wootsauce.livejournal.com
I guess between those times you get $100 for your grades you need a little pick me up!

Date: 2007-02-17 12:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] which-chick.livejournal.com
I never got $100 for my grades. I got "This grade here, why is it a B? Do you want to work in fast food all your life? And this, what is this? A C? Did you even GO to class?" The A's didn't get a whole lot of notice and they certainly didn't generate money.

Date: 2007-02-18 12:28 am (UTC)
ext_77607: (Default)
From: [identity profile] wootsauce.livejournal.com
Same here. And yet I knew tons of lame kids who were getting cs whose parents would pay them a ton of money for grades I considered unacceptable. I didn't really understand that system.

Money for grades

Date: 2007-02-18 11:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ardvaark99999.livejournal.com
As far as the "money for grades" thing goes, I do recall that there was a standing offer of a dollar for an A in math.

There was also an offer from dad made (at least to me) the second time I took my SATs. I was offered a buck per point increase from my first score (during my sophomore year). I got $100.00 out of it when I was a junior in HS. Generally, "cash for grades" was not explicitly on the table, though there were sort of indirect benefits worked into the system.

Besides, if you needed cash in HS, all you had to do was to sell your older siblings' term papers to other students after the siblings had graduated and the junior year english teacher had changed so that nobody recognized the papers from the previous years. I mean, hypothetically, of course. You know, if you had older siblings who wrote term papers. And if you really needed the money for something important, like comic books. And if when you were doing your term paper, you saw all these old files sitting around on the computer, just taking up space on the floppies, and you knew of some students who really needed some help and were willing to pay and all you had to do was to change a few things around and print out fresh copies.

Wow...I could have made a killing, hypothetically.

Re: Money for grades

Date: 2007-02-19 07:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] electroweak.livejournal.com
I'm noting an unstated "elder sibling tax" in your statement, in that I as the oldest sibling in my family couldn't profit from the papers of my nonexistent elders.

To correct this injustice, I shall require a time machine and a complete lack of morals. I'm halfway there.

Date: 2007-02-17 05:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] electroweak.livejournal.com
Hallmark Cards Inc., which has built its $4.2 billion (U.S.) empire on sentiments for life's happier times, is releasing a new line of cards that will speak to those and other situations that the company says have either been ignored by greeting card companies or received only a smattering of attention. For illness: "Cancer is a villain who doesn't play fair ... but it can't dim your spirit, and it can't silence prayer."

For the good of civilization, the person who wrote that card needs to be beaten to death over the course of several weeks by silverback gorrillas with the little mallets Marylanders use to break open crab claws.

Date: 2007-02-17 01:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] which-chick.livejournal.com
I figure they'll improve at writing the cards, given time. These are baby steps. (Having actually watched a baby learn to walk here recently, I assure you that there is rather a lot of falling-down involved.) It's okay if they suck at the outset. They're going in the correct direction and I remain hopeful that they will reach sensible one day. What that card missive really means is "I'm so sorry that you're going to die in an absolutely craptastic way following a lot of painful and invasive treatments that cost a freaking fortune and (this time) didn't do any damn good at all."

While Hallmark *could* hire me to write the missives, that'd be a bit sudden for the card-buying population. Probably they will need to work up to brutal honesty in smaller steps, like those people who get into cold water a little at a time.

Date: 2007-02-17 04:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] galena417.livejournal.com
i hate the selection in the sympathy & get well soon selections... yours is way better!

Date: 2007-02-18 02:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brni.livejournal.com

I think we'd just get where we are going a bit faster.

i think i'm gonna go into the handbasket business.

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