Aging isn’t
funny, unless we are able to laugh at our own selves.
There’s a certain
group of special and particularly social senior people I know, who celebrate
their collective birthdays every month. They gather for supper once a month to
honor those who are having birthdays. They do the whole cake and candles thing.
And they give each other birthday cards.
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| Greeting cards - public domain photo |
But here’s the funny part.
These folks don’t
actually sign the birthday cards. Instead, they sign little sticky notes and
tuck them into the cards.
“That way, we can
reuse the cards next month,” one participant told me. “Greeting cards are pricey these days, so each card becomes like a
gift in itself. And most of us won’t remember it anyway.”
It kind of makes
sense, doesn’t it? It’s kind of like re-gifting, only a little less tacky. Or
maybe more tacky, if you consider the sticky on the notes. (Sorry, had to.)
Stop me, if you’ve heard this one.
Last year, a
friend sent me a birthday card that read: “We’ll be friends until we’re old.
Then we’ll be new friends again.”
I’m not knocking
people who have actual medically diagnosed memory loss issues. It’s just that
most of us forget stuff all the time, especially as we grow older. It’s like
the old “hereafter” joke: “I find myself thinking more and more about the
hereafter. Like I come upstairs and wonder, What
did I come up here after?”
By the way, I
just had a milestone birthday. But none of my cards contained sticky notes. So
I guess I’ll have to buy some new cards for this month’s slew of birthdays.
Maybe going Post-It makes sense.
Images:
Public domain photo
