11-Card Monte
Wednesday - May 19, 2010
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Del.icio.usThis past Mother’s Day really had me appreciating all the things my wife does as a mother of two children. It made me realize that women are not just the nurturers of offspring - they are the mothers of everything. I think it’s a kind of love unique to them from which everyone benefits.
They don’t see what they do as work, rather as a means of caring for others. I was exposed to the very low end of that dynamic scale when my wife asked if I would take care of purchasing all the Mother’s Day cards for our family. She was busy caring for her mom, so of course I said yes.
She sincerely asked me to make sure I shopped for meaningful cards and not to just stop off at a convenience store and buy whatever cards they had from a probable choice of three. Although that’s probably what I would have done, I told her I was kind of insulted. This was going to be easy.
Then she proceeded to tell me for whom I needed to buy cards. First there were cards for both our mothers. Then we needed a Grandma and Nana card for our mothers from our kids. We needed aunty cards from our kids. She wanted cards for our respective sisters and sisters-in-law.
That didn’t include the cards I needed to buy for my wife from me or a card from each of our kids to their mother. I didn’t have a calculator, but I ended up having to buy somewhere between 9 and 100 cards. Oh yeah, and she wanted me to buy a bunch of “Thank You” cards.
When I got to the Mother’s Day card racks at the stationery store, the people were three deep for the length of the entire rack. I felt like I was waiting for a space at the urinal trough in the men’s bathroom at Aloha Stadium during halftime of the Pro Bowl. I finally managed to muscle in, but found my selections were less than a convenience store. I literally had to fight for every card and, in keeping to my word, made sure they didn’t have generic messages. I found myself battling this one particular woman who kept snatching every card I was about to pick.
We had words, but then I remembered she was probably a mother. I backed off and apologized, but she wasn’t buying it. She then handed me a Mother’s Day card saying, “That’s for you.” I looked at her and said, “I’m not a mother.” She replied, “I beg to differ.”
Ron’s WEBSITE of the week www.heco.com
Sharon Higa of HECO reminded me that, with the approach of school graduations, we need to be aware of the dangers involved with Mylar balloons and power lines.
Check out our STYLE pages 46-47 for ideas from Ben Franklin Crafts on graduation balloon weights, then send your Web sites to me at: rnagasawa@ midweek.com
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