Besides being the first television generation, baby boomers may also be the first (and last) Hallmark Card generation. Greeting cards were around long before us, despite what our kids and grandkids may think, but they didn’t have that “Hallmark Moment” kind of appeal.
We were indoctrinated into giving cards at a pretty early age, starting with Valentine’s Day. Who doesn’t remember getting those little cards with cute characters and sayings, all full of love and happiness, and spending hours deciding which kids to give one to and which kids to leave out. It was a lot easier to make a statement back then, and you knew where you stood by the end of the day.
It was probably the first version of “tagging” like on today’s Facebook. There might be 26 kids in the class and you’d only want to give out 25 because that kid who ate his buggers just wasn’t worthy, right? But mom would count them up and make sure everyone in your class was going to get a card from you whether you liked that or not. And then she’d send along a box of those little heart-shaped minty candies that could rot your teeth in 24 hours and had embarassing little sayings on them. Ah, those were the days!
Today, in our politically correct world, kids still give out cards in grade school but it’s mandatory that everyone get one. The teacher sends home a spreadsheet with names, email addresses and home pages for each kid, and the little ones have to print labels from the computer and can be done with the whole thing in about five minutes. That is certainly a far cry from the hours we spent agonizing over which card to give to the cute girl in the next row. It was a tough choice. Should she get the one that said “You’re the cowgirl of my dreams!” or the more subtle, “I’m shootin’ to be your valentine!” I may not have mentioned that I usually had cards with a cowboy motif.
As we got older and wiser, Hallmark strengthened its grip on our little libidos and by high school cards became the easiest way to show affection for someone. We had stopped sending cards to our guy friends by then, well most of us had anyway, and it could be a difficult choice whether to send just one card to one special girl, or to play the field and use the shotgun approach (notice the cowboy motif is still at work here). If you were smart and hoped to have a prom date in a few months you’d just pick one and maybe even send a flower along with the card.
Now delivering the card in those days was also a problem because while it was cool to give one, it was very uncool to be seen doing it. Valentine’s Day, by the age of 15 or 16, usually meant getting to school by 5:00 AM or so when only the janitors could see you, or so we thought. So picture, before dawn, dozens of pubescent boys sneaking around the school leaving cards and flowers and hoping they were picking the right desks. By 9:00 AM homeroom was in full swing and it was obvious who had been there early because we were drooped over half asleep.
Nowadays things are a lot easier. A young lad has only to text on his cellphone some pithy 128-character saying like “u r kewl” or “wanna hookup?” Granted that 128 characters, which is the maximum length allowed in a text message (or a tweet for Twitter users) is probably about 120 characters more than we might have used on our cards as kids, but…and this is really important…ours were written by hand and that counted extra. A wobbly or a confident signature could often tell a girl all she needed to know about her suitor and his confidence level. I have no idea how today’s girls figure it out from typed messages.
Back to Hallmark. As boomers moved through life, Hallmark tried to keep up with the changing times. By the 1990’s we were no longer sending cowboy cards, many had been divorced and remarried one or more times, some were still single and some were unhappily married but still together. Oh yes, a small percentage were still married to their first spouses and are still happily together today, but they didn’t really need Hallmark. Somehow they had learned to actually communicate with each other.
For a time Hallmark tried to put out divorce and bad relationship cards. I guess they figured that if couples were going to end up hating each other they might as well get in on the action and help them express their dislikes. Here are a few card samples from those dark days:
Love may be beautiful, love may be bliss. But I only slept with you, because I was pissed.
I love your smile, your face, and your eyes. Damn, I’m good at telling lies!
I see your face when I am dreaming. That’s why I always wake up screaming.
Needless to say, this was not one of Hallmark’s finer moments and the marketing executives were, I’m sure, put out to pasture. But unlike earlier times, when all cards were happy and gay, in a 19th century way, our times are reflected in the greeting cards we use. Hallmark is no longer the power it once was. Competition and digital communication have taken a toll. But I will always hang on to that card I got in the fourth grade from Suzanne Filicello, a 9-year old princess with teased hair. It said, simply, “Stay away from me.” But I knew in my heart of hearts that she really didn’t mean it, or else I wouldn’t have gotten a card from her at all.
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