New Thing #340--When You Care Enough

We're going to a college graduation this weekend, and today I was looking for a card. I went to three different stores, but didn't have any luck. However, at one of my stops the clerk opened up the bottom of the rack and I browsed a "secret stash" of greeting cards.

Card manufacturers mustn't care about December graduates, because they sure don't have appropriate cards on their racks. At my first stop (a "factory" card store) I actually ran into another woman looking for the same thing I was. We commiserated about the poor selection of graduation cards available; I assured her the fancier "brand name" shop down the street would certainly have what we were looking for. Boy, was I disappointed!

The "brand name" store had a small selection of specialty cards in the last aisle, which seemed to be a catch-all category for anything that wasn't Christmas, birthday, wedding, anniversary, or get well. I was amazed at what you can buy a card for now: among others, you can give a card to someone going into the armed forces-a specific card for each branch, a Boy Scouts who's receiving his Eagle Scout award, a Girl Scout who's being awarded the Gold Award, a priest celebrating an anniversary, and cards for people undergoing chemotherapy.

When I asked about graduation cards at the cashier's desk, one of the clerks smiled sadly and said they didn't really have much right now. She walked back to the area with me, though, and showed me what they had. There were specific cards (one for each category) for someone receiving a bachelors degree, a masters degree, or a doctorate. However, I didn't care for "the" card. She also pointed out more generic "congratulation" cards, with no mention of what the person was being congratulated for.

When neither of these were acceptable to me, she opened the drawer underneath the display case and let me look down there. Sadly, there were still no graduation cards. I thanked her for her time, and went to a third store closer to my home, where I gave up my search and bought one of the generic cards they had available.