I have a bone to pick with the U.S. greeting card industry. It began in 1987,
the day I got snippy with one of my coworkers. We'll call her Helen. Helen
was somewhere in her early 60s, husband, grandkids, faint mustache, etc., and
she was what Helen would called "a sweet old broad." But she provoked me
into getting snippy. I'm not proud of it, but Helen drove me into a state of
frenzied snippiness, complete with buggy eyes and an uncharacteristic stream
of quasi-witty, withering sarcasm. Let's not dwell on it, okay?

Sorry, I got a little snippy there.

Anyway, the upshot is, I felt poorly about my boorish (BUT JUSTIFIED)
behavior, and at lunch, I wolfed down a quick pizza buffet and hit the card
rack at the Carmel mall in search of a missive that would adequately convey
my regrets, mend our fences, guarantee Helen wouldn't screw me over
the next time I needed to borrow some lunch funds.

Well, suffice it to say I was thoroughly  nonplussed. Everything I could find either
came bearing that blipping Garfield the Cat or sending Helen the overheated and
undesirable message that she needed to secure a restraining order against me or,
even worse, that she could easily grab a backseat freebie with an agricultural
writer about half her age. Shudder. Sorry. I was left with one choice:
I bought the gooshy-mooshy card, inked in "esteemed and respected fellow
wage earner" in place of "the throbbing beat that fills the core of my heart" and
"pissing you off with my smartass B.S." instead of "rending your soul with my
thoughtless words," and drew business suits on the discreetly naked couple
making love under the waterfall. Helen appreciated the gesture, and I
mysteriously began to find large plates of tollhouse cookies on my desk.

Since taking my vows roughly six years ago, I have discovered a world of male miscues, missteps, faux pas(es?), and boneheaded position statements for which the greeting card industry has provided no appropriate remedy. This is equally true of the "Get well" card. The industry's tendency toward either cartoonish insensitivity ("Snoopy won't be arfing as long as you are barfing") or oozing emotional excess. Why must we be content to express our concern and compassion only for those diseases and syndromes officially recognized by the American Medical Association or George Clooney? Can't we register our dismay over those slight discomforts, those embarassing maladies, those unfortunate incidents that have laid our dear ones low?

Well, yeah. That's why our latest Bladepro Mall shop, Hallmart Cards,
stocks a full line of get well presets that digitally say, 'Hey, I know you're hurting,
even though you begged your family not to tell anybody what happened, and
I just wanted to let you know I'm there for you any time you think you're
gonna get one past me."

Download these presets,
they're saved as getwell.zip;
Relax, drink some tea,
and don't sprain a hip.