Take My Card

Carter has been home with a tummy ache for the last two days so I have tried to stay close to home.  I did some cleaning out of my shirt drawers, the downstairs refrigerator and then some old files in my office.  I know it all sounds very random and it was.  There is so much reorganizing, cleaning out and throwing away to be done at my house that it feels overwhelming.  I know that it might be more effective to pick one room or closet and completely clean that before I move on to a new place, but that requires a level of concentration and dedication that I don’t seem to have.

While cleaning out my office I came upon a business card for me as “Nude Photographer.”  Read that as you like!  The card was a joke that my great college friend Laura Sherck made for my twenty-first birthday and put in every mailbox in the whole college.   The worst part about it was she put my real phone number on the card.

Back in the day if you had a card you were whatever that card said you were!  I can’t remember how many calls I got from her joke, but somehow the many cards she got printed up ended up being highly circulated.  I do recall fielding an inquiry from so old man who called to see if I would take photos of he and his wife.  I stopped him fairly quickly before he got to the question of exactly who would be nude, the photographer or the subjects.

I learned from that experience the power of the card.  When I got out of college and had a real job my card read “Sales Engineer.”  I sounded so much more highly qualified to sell mail opening and extracting machines as an engineer.  Little did anyone know that I barley passed calculus.

While selling machines I also had a catering business on the side.  It was a highly “unofficial” business, but I had cards.  À la Carter – creative caterers, with just my phone number.  I certainly could not put down an address since I cooked out of my home kitchen.  No one ever seemed to ask.  I had a card that was all they needed to know.

Now a days anyone can make themselves cards on their computer so they don’t hold quite the sway they once did.  Now I guess if you have a website you are more official, but just like cards, anyone can make one.  I’m just glad that the web did not exist when I was in college.  Lord knows what kind of joke website Laura Sherck might have created for my birthday.  Luck for me I have changed phone numbers a few dozen times since college but if it was a website it could follow me forever.