Last week I walked into my local Hallmark store to pick up an anniversary card for my husband. I browsed the selection and picked up the cards that caught my eye. As I read through them I noticed that tears were starting to well up in the corners of my eyes. Before long they were rolling down my cheeks. To me this was a good sign, to the people standing near me, this may have been a little frightening.
I will not buy a card unless it invokes some sort of emotion from me. Laughter, snorting, sobbing and getting choked up are all acceptable byproducts of card-reading. I am not the type of person that keeps a stack of cards ready in case of emergency. I feel that the card must match the recipient. Generic “Happy Birthday” cards are not my cup of tea.
Another caveat to this quirk of mine is that even if I pick up a card and it causes me to cry I don’t stop there. No no. I must read every goddamned card in the store to ensure that I have in fact found the most perfect card for the occasion. It is with this objective that I approached this particular outing.
As I stood there with the faint taste of salty tears on my lip, I had narrowed it down to three cards. Any of them would have been fine. Any rational person would have stopped pussyfooting and just bought a damn card already, but I found it better to stand in the aisle and reminisce. I was reminded of the first time that I ever bought a card for Colin.
We started dating on June 18th. By June 19th we were attached at the hip. His birthday falls at the end of July, a mere month and a half into our relationship. Most people would fret over the present; I was fretting over the card.
I was standing in the Hallmark at the mall. His birthday gift, a book I knew he would love, had already been purchased and I just needed a card to go with it. It was a particularly sticky situation due to the newness of our relationship. We both knew that we were in love, but we hadn’t said it yet. We knew that this would be the relationship that didn’t come to an awkward ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ type of end, but we hadn’t put that into words yet. How do you buy a card for someone that you’re madly in love with, but exclude the word love?
One of the Hallmark employees walked up to me and asked me if I needed any help. We’ll say this was around three o’clock. I let him know that I was fine and he went on his way. About two hours later he approached me again, this time he looked a little concerned. He asked me if he could help me find something specific, maybe if I explained the situation he could help me. So I told him I was looking for a birthday card for my new boyfriend and it had to be perfect. He offered up a few things that I had no interest in, and he went on his way. An hour later (yes, that’s three whole hours) he came up to me and offered his solution. He said, “Here, just buy any card in the store and I will sign it saying that you spent half of the afternoon searching for the perfect card. That will say what you’re trying to say better then anything you will find on these shelves.” I walked out of the store sometime after six o’clock content that I had done my best.
I did end up finding him the perfect card that day. I also found him the perfect card for our one year anniversary. So maybe it takes me an extraordinarily long amount of time to find the one that says it best, and maybe I’ve got a bit of a problem, but if you ever get a card from me, you’ll know it’s a good one.
 
 
 