I'm scanning the greeting card racks for the perfect message, the one that will acknowledge your growing accumulation of birthdays with a unique combination of wit, charm and quiet good taste. Instead, I see grade-school "humor" and saccharine sentiments.
So I turn to cards featuring attractive, contemporary cover artwork, only to read a stupefyingly dull message inside.
It's your day, so enjoy your cake! It's your day, so live it up! It's your day, so here's to you! It's as if the upscale card companies spend all their creative energy on professional design and let their IT people write the copy.
Maybe the problem is that a birthday is so generic (comes every year, everyone has one) that it inherently lacks personality. To mark the occasion, adults tend to do the same sort of things -- eat cake, drink (too much), get presents, feel regretful.
But greeting-card writers need to take this dreary reality and infuse it with fantasy and fun. One of the best cards I've seen lately (and sent to two people) features a grinning little boy prancing in his birthday suit on the cover. Inside, the copy reads, "Birthdays make me feel good all over!"
Wednesday
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