Seems it happens every year. This year I decided to solve the issue. I’ve been putting it off for too long but moving into a Senior’s apartment necessitated the move… and it was all the fault of the Pearl of the Orient, my late wife, Norma.
I spent a week sorting stacks and boxes of old greeting cards the Pearl had been pack-ratting away for decades. They were old, dusty, and the combined effects on my allergies as well as nostalgia was pretty hard on the tissue supply. Ah I remember…
It had happened every year with, “Elliott have you updated the Christmas Card list? Mailing deadline is next Monday!”
“Well it can’t happen today. This is a very important football game I’m watching. I have to concentrate. I’ve been following this series all fall. It’s crucial,” I explained, detailing reasons why I couldn’t even consider thinking about Christmas Cards today.
“Oh Twaddle (or some such comment),” snorted the Pearl
“Mark, get a couple of those butter tarts out that I hid in the freezer. That should stir the Old Toot into action, commented the Pearl as Junior, with a squeal of “Butter tarts!!” charged through the room bound for the freezer in the garage at a pace I had not witnessed in months.
I sank a little lower into the couch.
Junior exploded back in from the garage, nearly taking the door off its hinges.
“YOU ATE THEM ALL, YOU BIG PIG!” roared an enraged teenager on discovering the stash of goodies had been sacrificed to wood splitting operations two days earlier.
The Pearl managed to avert the impending patricide by bribing Junior with a box of Chocolate Turtles. Then she turned on me and confiscated the TV remote.
Reluctantly I fired up the computer and got started on editing and updating the Christmas card list. There were hundreds of names. Where did they all come from I wondered?
“I don’t know. You were the computer whiz who claimed you could automate all that stuff,” shot the Pearl as she slapped my hand away from the chocolates and passed them over to Junior who immediately scoffed a handful while snarling at my grasping fingers.
“I must have inadvertently merged those names from contacts you had in our spam folder.
Sorting them out will be impossible,” I reasoned as I fiddled with the “sort” function on the spreadsheet.
“Who are Irene and Vince? Looks like we’ve been sending them a card every year for a decade,” I stated and in shock realized the list had grown to hundreds and the postage to a substantial portion of the national debt.
“Maybe we shouldn’t send a card until they send us one first,” suggested the Pearl, ever the Wise One.
It sounded like a great solution so today some 30- plus years later by following that rationale and never including a return address on our cards we have it winnowed down to about 15 cards annually.
But we still get one every year from Irene and Vince. Merry Christmas from the Card Grinch.
