You have: no thanks
This is likely to get me chastised for being an ungrateful little shit. I do not particularly care, as I have a lengthy history with charges of ingratitude. I was called ungrateful in middle school because I did not make use of the larger-than-normal locker which I was granted despite never asking for one. In fact I was rather upset at the time they were distributed, because I knew I was never going to use it and would rather give it to someone who would actually find value in it, but that's neither here nor there. I have been called ungrateful many, many times for daring to see problems with America. The logic was something to the effect that by expressing an opinion I was endangering free speech.
However this time I am going to mount an attack on the very way one is expected to express gratitude, specifically: thank-you cards.
Unlike decent human beings, I am still in somewhat frequent in-person contact with my family. This means that for most purposes I can just walk up to someone and thank them for anything they ought to be thanked for. This is apparently not good enough for humans, who are an inferior and illogical species. Instead, I must write a note and mail it. I should probably point out that my grandparents are my neighbors. It doesn't matter. I have to waste an hour of my day and a goodly amount of gasoline driving to the post office and back, pay for postage and a special card (because folded paper won't do), and then wait a few days for someone from the post office to drive out and give the card to my grandparents. I can't hand it to them myself or use the vocal cords that Satan gave me, because that isn't the way we've always done it in the past.
But this presupposes that I've written the card, and I don't know how to do that. There are few things, I think, that are crueler than telling an analytical perfectionist to participate in an ill-conceived tradition, especially one that basically insures that the thought that perfectionist puts in out of compulsion will never be reciprocated on the other end. It's even worse when the perfectionist knows this fact.
I keep every card I have ever received for any reason. This includes one with a bizarre "count the flowers" activity on the inside, mass-produced thoughtless elementary school valentines with Shrek on them, and numerous "Happy X Birthday" cards from my grandmother made with varying colors of Arial and adorned with jpegs of such low quality that they probably printed out with viruses.
I recognize that this is exceedingly rare, probably even pathological, but the idea that someone would throw away a card is an abomination to me. So I don't know what I'm supposed to write for something I know will be hastily disposed of. And even then, sometimes it's just impossible to think through.
For instance: if someone gives you a book it's incredibly easy to thank someone for it. "Thanks for Hire More Female Guards. I'm loving it so far!" Even if you haven't cracked the book open yet or thought it was incredibly dull, it's still easy to lie for the formality of it. But what if someone gives you money? "Thanks for the cash. It will pay 5% of the rent next month." No. That's garbage.
I posed this situation to a friend (as it's one I am currently trying to solve, and the one that prompted this post) and she told me that a good answer is "Thank you for the cash, I used it to buy X thing which I'm enjoying." This would be a good solution except:
a. I didn't buy anything with it, and there is nothing in particular I want right now
b. As I am a pissy manchild, dweeb of dweebs, I live at home and don't have all-consuming recurring expenses
c. I guess I could spend part of one of the gifts on medicine, but it's brain medicine and these are the "depression don't real" types and they don't need to know I'm on anything
d. Actually it was a check so I couldn't directly buy anything with it, and once it's deposited it ceases to be its own thing. Just added to a number in a database. I can't tell them "okay, use the check I deposited on X day to pay for this specific credit card transaction, and pay the rest with my other money." It's nonsensical.
e. I can't lie here and say I bought something I didn't because I might be asked to show a physical object next time I see them.
f. I can't just say "I done did deposititeded it" because that just sounds feckin' DUMB
g. If I have to spend it on something to be socially acceptable, and can't just save it without a specific thing I'm saving towards, then you really haven't given me money, you've decided to get me a $X dollar gift but outsource the actual shopping to me, which is... kind of shit? Especially since I hate shopping and was raised to be ultra-frugal to the point that buying a bottle of soda every week makes me feel like a financially irresponsible hedonist?
h. Why should I disclose my financial activities to prying family? When did this become a thing?
The other thing about mandating thank-you cards is that mandatory emotions are insincere. Technically I am supposed to thank my seventeenth cousin Billy Bob for the thirty copies of Why Murder Is Okay When Soldiers Do It instead of sending him a video of me torching the lot of 'em. Okay, that's an extreme example, but it's hardly unheard of to get passive-aggressive gifts or those that just miss the mark or are thoughtless or just add insult to an injury that you haven't informed the gift-giver of.
And making sending a special note a part of the mandatory process of thanking someone devalues those rare and special occurrences when someone helps you out at a crucial moment and you actively, voluntarily want to speak in tongues and sing their praises. Every bit of unfelt-but-socially-mandated emotion erodes at the value of actual emotion. Thanking Billy Bob for his racist murderbooks is a disgrace to the idea of gratitude. Being angry when your sportsball team loses is a disgrace to the idea of outrage. Every time people put on these performative displays of emotions, it makes people like me that little bit more wary about genuine distress or love or fear or appreciation or confusion. The more that "convince people you are feeling the thing you are not" is a required skill to just get along, the more people end up being evil emotional manipulators. Come on, whoever codifies social norms! Think about consequences for once in your pathetic, supercilious lives!
However this time I am going to mount an attack on the very way one is expected to express gratitude, specifically: thank-you cards.
Unlike decent human beings, I am still in somewhat frequent in-person contact with my family. This means that for most purposes I can just walk up to someone and thank them for anything they ought to be thanked for. This is apparently not good enough for humans, who are an inferior and illogical species. Instead, I must write a note and mail it. I should probably point out that my grandparents are my neighbors. It doesn't matter. I have to waste an hour of my day and a goodly amount of gasoline driving to the post office and back, pay for postage and a special card (because folded paper won't do), and then wait a few days for someone from the post office to drive out and give the card to my grandparents. I can't hand it to them myself or use the vocal cords that Satan gave me, because that isn't the way we've always done it in the past.
But this presupposes that I've written the card, and I don't know how to do that. There are few things, I think, that are crueler than telling an analytical perfectionist to participate in an ill-conceived tradition, especially one that basically insures that the thought that perfectionist puts in out of compulsion will never be reciprocated on the other end. It's even worse when the perfectionist knows this fact.
I keep every card I have ever received for any reason. This includes one with a bizarre "count the flowers" activity on the inside, mass-produced thoughtless elementary school valentines with Shrek on them, and numerous "Happy X Birthday" cards from my grandmother made with varying colors of Arial and adorned with jpegs of such low quality that they probably printed out with viruses.
I recognize that this is exceedingly rare, probably even pathological, but the idea that someone would throw away a card is an abomination to me. So I don't know what I'm supposed to write for something I know will be hastily disposed of. And even then, sometimes it's just impossible to think through.
For instance: if someone gives you a book it's incredibly easy to thank someone for it. "Thanks for Hire More Female Guards. I'm loving it so far!" Even if you haven't cracked the book open yet or thought it was incredibly dull, it's still easy to lie for the formality of it. But what if someone gives you money? "Thanks for the cash. It will pay 5% of the rent next month." No. That's garbage.
I posed this situation to a friend (as it's one I am currently trying to solve, and the one that prompted this post) and she told me that a good answer is "Thank you for the cash, I used it to buy X thing which I'm enjoying." This would be a good solution except:
a. I didn't buy anything with it, and there is nothing in particular I want right now
b. As I am a pissy manchild, dweeb of dweebs, I live at home and don't have all-consuming recurring expenses
c. I guess I could spend part of one of the gifts on medicine, but it's brain medicine and these are the "depression don't real" types and they don't need to know I'm on anything
d. Actually it was a check so I couldn't directly buy anything with it, and once it's deposited it ceases to be its own thing. Just added to a number in a database. I can't tell them "okay, use the check I deposited on X day to pay for this specific credit card transaction, and pay the rest with my other money." It's nonsensical.
e. I can't lie here and say I bought something I didn't because I might be asked to show a physical object next time I see them.
f. I can't just say "I done did deposititeded it" because that just sounds feckin' DUMB
g. If I have to spend it on something to be socially acceptable, and can't just save it without a specific thing I'm saving towards, then you really haven't given me money, you've decided to get me a $X dollar gift but outsource the actual shopping to me, which is... kind of shit? Especially since I hate shopping and was raised to be ultra-frugal to the point that buying a bottle of soda every week makes me feel like a financially irresponsible hedonist?
h. Why should I disclose my financial activities to prying family? When did this become a thing?
The other thing about mandating thank-you cards is that mandatory emotions are insincere. Technically I am supposed to thank my seventeenth cousin Billy Bob for the thirty copies of Why Murder Is Okay When Soldiers Do It instead of sending him a video of me torching the lot of 'em. Okay, that's an extreme example, but it's hardly unheard of to get passive-aggressive gifts or those that just miss the mark or are thoughtless or just add insult to an injury that you haven't informed the gift-giver of.
And making sending a special note a part of the mandatory process of thanking someone devalues those rare and special occurrences when someone helps you out at a crucial moment and you actively, voluntarily want to speak in tongues and sing their praises. Every bit of unfelt-but-socially-mandated emotion erodes at the value of actual emotion. Thanking Billy Bob for his racist murderbooks is a disgrace to the idea of gratitude. Being angry when your sportsball team loses is a disgrace to the idea of outrage. Every time people put on these performative displays of emotions, it makes people like me that little bit more wary about genuine distress or love or fear or appreciation or confusion. The more that "convince people you are feeling the thing you are not" is a required skill to just get along, the more people end up being evil emotional manipulators. Come on, whoever codifies social norms! Think about consequences for once in your pathetic, supercilious lives!
Comments
Post a Comment