Christmas Cards

Well last Monday when I went into the warehouse to fold my papers, one of the paperboys said he had to talk to me. Man I was thinking I messed up or something. I was trying to think what I could have done to make another paperboy mad. Well it wasn’t anything like that. He told me that some of the veteran paperboys put Christmas cards in their Saturday papers. He told me that one year when he did this he received $1000 in cash and gift cards. There was one catch though, I had to say Happy Holiday’s instead of Merry Christmas. Now I’m not a closet Christian so this was kind of a dilemma, but after working this out with Suzi and not wanting to cast a bad shadow on my employer I realized that if I were to do this Happy Holiday’s was the way to go.

Well needless to say delusions of a $1000 in Christmas gifts seduced me into putting the cards in last Saturday’s paper. Well on Saturday while inserting the cards into my papers that same paperboy comes back and looks at my Christmas cards and compliments me on how good they look, but at the same time I can see that he is somewhat trying to appease me. So, I asked him “what was the matter, did I have a typo on my cards?” He said “no” and then proceeded to tell me that my computer generated cards on regular bond paper were to fancy. I guess my mistake was that I used color printing and I actually used graphics. He told me that I they should have been in black and white, with no graphics and that I should have made them look as poor as I could. To this paperboy if his customers believed that he needed the money they would be more giving. This concept was foreign to me. In fact I must confess the whole Christmas card thing felt kind of weird to me. I mean I sent out 335 Christmas cards to people I don’t even know and to top it off it was like I was saying “give me a Christmas gift or I’ll start throwing your paper in the gutter and on the roof”. That thought changed on Tuesday when I received a total of $40 from two customers. As of this morning I already had $100 in money and gift cards. Amazing! Man, I think I like this whole Christmas card thing. Hey do you thing I could get away with a Groundhog Day card?